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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.

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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.

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