An Ending - The Horror In Ambiguity (Kevin Winslow)

An Ending - The Horror In Ambiguity

Kevin Winslow 

The Horror in Ambiguity 

Blog Post #1

The fear of an outside force, "the other", was a theme present throughout John Carpenter's film The Thing. In the film an alien life-form would assimilate into the bodies of other organic beings, mostly being human and dog. During this process of assimilation the aliens would disguise themselves as the comrades of other members of the crew in a chameleon-like fashion. They would only normally reveal themselves (the alien monster hidden within) when alone with a susceptible host to spread their alien infection. The alien life-form appears in forms that are a bastardization of what would normally occur in nature, giving them a sort of uncanny appearance.

               

Nearing the end of the film the protagonist RJ MacReady destroys the abomination that was once his companion Blair. Along with the Blair thing most of the facility was also destroyed in the explosion, leaving the camp in a burning ruin. 

The scene begins with MacReady walking through the ruins of the camp. There is a sort of hesitation or fatigue in his step but any physical damage to him is unknown to the viewer. The only light source in the shot are the fires behind MacReady, this gives him a sort of shadow-like appearance as he moves through the environment. 

After observing the fire that is consuming the remainder of the outpost he hobbles over to an area in the foreground where he sits down to rest. Only here do we finally see MacReady's face. He has a look of extreme exhaustion, almost as if he is mentally broken after all the events that have occurred. His deep frequent breaths shooting out of his mouth create a contrast with the surrounding dark environment and show just how tired he truly is. Soot and frost grip his beard as he goes to sip from his alcoholic beverage. This is a different MacReady than we saw earlier in the film, he is now too worn out to be the energetic leader he once was.

A moment later Childs enters from behind after being missing during the previous encounter with the Thing. The two of them appear to be the only ones who've survived the blast. MacReady is clearly suspicious of Childs as he asks him of his recent whereabouts in a tone that makes it sound sort of like an interrogation.

The rest of the scene sets up an ambiguous scenario where the viewer does not know if the humans or the alien Thing prevail. Childs takes a swig from MacReady's bottle, MacReady smiles softly and then rests his head on the debris next to him. The dark brooding theme starts to play and the screen cuts to black momentarily, thus concluding the film. 

Throughout the film the idea is mistrust guided each characters actions and interactions with one another; this idea of mistrust carries over to the final moments of the film. In these final moments, the audience can't be certain that Childs is a thing but we also can't be certain that he is human either. This uncertainty leads to a sense of suspense and since the film ends on this note it creates an ambiguous sort of scenario. As a viewer we don't know which faction triumphed, we're not even certain if these two are the only survivors. For example, the character Nauls doesn't show up after the explosion. We can assume he was destroyed in the blast but he could have also been taken over by the Thing. The ending was perfect for a film like this since it continued the feeling of mistrust and uncertainty that enveloped the rest of the experience.