The Thing (1982) reviews

The Fuzzy Mushroom take on The Thing

By Fuzzy Mushroom · Updated 10 November 2026 · The Pros 68 · The Punters 95 · Spore Score 74 · How we write our takes

Why The Punters rate it far higher than The Pros

The Thing is the great comeback story of horror cinema, and its Pros vs Punters split shows it. The Punters give it 95. The Pros sit on 68, and the Spore Score is 74, which earns it a fuzzy tag. When it came out in June 1982 it was mauled by critics and flopped at the box office. Critics' scores for older films often still draw on reviews from their original release, and that history drags The Pros figure down. Audiences, who discovered it on video and late-night television, made it a classic.

What it does well

John Carpenter takes a simple set-up and tightens it like a vice. At a remote American research station in Antarctica, twelve men take in a husky fleeing from a Norwegian camp. The dog is not a dog. The creature can copy any living thing perfectly, so nobody knows who is still human. Kurt Russell is the helicopter pilot MacReady, bearded, whisky in hand, the closest thing the film has to a leader, and Keith David, Wilford Brimley and the rest of the cast play men slowly turning on each other.

Rob Bottin's practical creature effects are still astonishing: heads sprouting spider legs, chests opening into mouths, bodies collapsing into something with too many limbs. But the scene everyone remembers is the blood test, where MacReady ties the men up and touches a hot wire to each sample. It is almost unbearable suspense built from a petri dish. Ennio Morricone's score, a low, pulsing heartbeat, keeps the dread going.

Why The Pros were unkind

In 1982, the gore shocked reviewers, and the bleak, open ending left people cold. It also arrived two weeks after E.T., when audiences wanted a friendly alien, not a monster that could be anyone. Even now, some critics find the characters thin and the film more machine than heart.

Who it is for

Horror fans, obviously, and anyone who loves paranoid thrillers in which trust is the real enemy. Strong stomachs only: the effects are still grotesque.

Context

Bill Lancaster's script goes back to John W. Campbell's 1938 novella Who Goes There?, which had already been filmed as The Thing from Another World in 1951. Carpenter's version is far closer to the book's idea of a shape-shifter. A prequel, also called The Thing, followed in 2011. Carpenter later counted it among his favourites of his own films.

The Fuzzy Mushroom verdict

Worth a watch, with a Spore Score of 74. Ignore the low critical figure: history has proved The Punters right. One of the greatest horror films ever made, and the final scene in the snow is still argued about more than forty years on.