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Comment by mullen | Hacker News Reader

I can not stress enough to the Hacker News community that if you have not seen this movie, go see this movie. John Carpenter did a really great job with this movie and story. Every scene in this movie plays to the story, there is literally no filler in this movie. Unlike movies today, which are epic 2 hour snoozefests that are chock full of pointless scene after pointless scene which adds nothing to the film or the story line. The Thing starts right off with the story and smoothly transition through it to the very end. Also, The Thing monster in this story is scary as hell too.

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You might be interested to know that "The Thing" was filmed in my hometown[1]. I remember visiting the sets as a kid, seeing the freaky dog models, etc. The local museum still has some of the film props.

And yes, my town gets a lot of snow, typically around five-six metres. The "Antarctic base" in the movie was just a short drive away up a road that led to an old mine site[2]. We used to get rides up there and hike around when we were kids.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart,_British_Columbia

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granduc_Mine

The monsters themselves are fantastic. CG in movies still have a long way to go to catch up to how real the monsters felt in The Thing.

And yet the monster scenes don't overshadow the human drama, the continuous buildup, the claustrophobia you feel from there being no escape.

The Thing is such a great movie, and definitely my favourite horror movie.

I don't think the CG/Post is the issue with making the unknown feel believable. It's entirely the way in which the actors interact with the physical prop, in essence. Something you can't replicate with stand-ins or match moving. Performance capture tends to get it right.

The more monstrous transformations of the thing look horrifying even in well-lit, motionless, on-the-set photos while surrounded by a film crew. That's the result of fantastic creature design. "The Thing" would have been effective whether done in CG or not, but I have to agree that acting out appropriate fear must have been a little bit easier for the cast of "The Thing" thanks to the monster being so vividly realized on the set.

Do you have any links to those pictures? "The Thing" is pretty hard to Google.

I honestly can't think of a single thing they could do to improve this.

This isn't your typical "smart" people doing stupid things. This is a bunch of smart and capable people completely overmatched by something far beyond their understanding.

It's darn near a perfect movie.

Its amazing how not having the typical "here, hold my beer" response seen in a huge amount of movies (not just horror) enhances the movie. Ok, knowing what they know, it is a pretty good set of decisions. I do admit to committing one of the horror movie cliches in real life, but I'm not fond of them in my movies.

I absolutely hate movies populated by the smart-stupid-doers. For a low budget example, "Deep Star Six" is basically a comedy because of it.

"Prometheus", anyone?

The monster scenes progress smoothly as well. Starting with the dog in the kennel, and leading up to the spider-head. Which still creeps me out to this day.

It's how a horror movie should be made.

SPOILERALERT

Not really - there's a pic of it in the article.

Unpopular opinion coming through: If you're not easily scared, films made only from scary-stuff-that-isn't-scary are really boring.

I'll give you an example: Alien. Literally all that film is is "they go down to this planet, a spider fucks a guy's face, and then a monster kills everyone." If you're not scared by that stuff, you get nothing out of that film, because there is nothing else that happens. The second one is better, something happens between the characters.

And yeah, I feel this way about The Thing.

> Unlike movies today, which are epic 2 hour snoozefests that are chock full of pointless scene after pointless scene which adds nothing to the film or the story line.

Someone sounds a little jaded.

> Someone sounds a little jaded.

I will admit, while not a horror story, I did have the latest Hobbit movie on my mind. I think I could cut 1/3 from from the latest movie and not impact the story. If anything, probably bring it inline with the book.

The latest Hobbit was a tour de force compared to the second one. What an absolute piece of garbage that was. Talk about milking the book for all it's worth. One 3 hour movie probably would have sufficed to the tell the Hobbit story.

Well to be fair, the Hobbit is not even in the top 100 best movies of the last ten years. Not exactly a sterling example of modern film making.

This was the first horror movie I saw, at 10. I didn't sleep for three nights. I still love this movie!

There is also a similarly impressive 'sequel' that came out as a PS2 game; it picked up from the end of the movie, the base reduced to burning wreckage you explored. Worth tracking down if you are a fan of Carpenters' reboot (the original came out in the 50's).

I remember playing the demo for that on the PC. Let’s check Wikipedia:

“Platforms: PlayStation 2, Windows, Xbox”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_%28video_game%29

Has an amazing ending, also.

I agree, this is the best horror film made

I think the movie is good as well, but the article uses a really hard to read font.

The presentation of Websites is to HN as "sharp knees" are Fark.

Sharp knees is generally snark meant to imply that the person being discussed is attractive. Bad web design is a legitimate concern, and is something that is often found in articles linked on HN when designers get a little too experimental.

Yes, but criticising this site's font as being hard to read is a stretch. It's fine. HN will be critical of anything that isn't stock sans-serif in black on white.

It might not be impossible or even difficult to read for you or I, but remember that every OS displays fonts a little differently, indeed some browsers may display differently, and different monitors display a little differently. People could be having a vastly different experience from what you or I have.

There's a reason sans-serif black-on-white is the default, and why people ask for it. It's easy to read no matter what. That's why Readability exists. And for what it's worth, at first glance I find this page difficult to read as well on a 1080p 15" monitor. The font makes me have to focus on one line and one word at a time, where in stock sans serif I can skim. That's what happens when you try to translate text that works fine in a novel and put it on a computer screen. You would never see a newspaper or a textbook printed in this fashion. Because it's harder to read.

Try this:

http://www.readability.com/m?url=http://www.theparisreview.o...

Just turn off Javascript.

*chock full

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