Spoiler Discussion

1.The famous defibrillator scene actually required a near identical mold of a chest to be created. When the hands get ripped off, what was ripped off were fake prosthetic arms attached to a double-amputee double. The scene took a ton of people and time to choreograph, and it paid off, because it looks amazing and was jarring.

2. The ending of the film being super ambiguous was great. I read about the other ending that was created in case test audiences didn’t like the real one and I’m glad Carpenter stuck with this. The uncertainty coupled with the knowledge that “the Thing’s” contact with humanity would lead to the latter’s extermination really sells the gravity of the whole situation.

Honestly, from my view it felt nihilistic. The entire film felt like that- the “Thing” acted like a hydra, as each part of it’s body flew off a new nightmarish creature came into creation. Like a virus infecting a body, it felt like it was growing too fast to be contained. Once I realized that even the blood of the creature was sentient, it just felt like it was impossible for it to ever be eradicated by the depleting team of researchers.