'Let Me Tell You Where the Evil Is.'

I think when one understands the nature of horror, and experiences it for themselves in one way or another, as there are horrific elements regarding just about anything and everything in real life, you understand the subtle and not so subtle truths and metaphors for very real social issues contained with the horror film genre. Although, this line of thought can't always be applied when happy and 'excited' teenagers are butchered in horror movies. As Carpenter says in the video, these films work so well, and will continue to, because they touch on not only the external darkness, the other tribe as it were, but also the darkness lingering just beneath the surface, inside of us. The hulking lumbering force of nature in a mask wielding a knife, chainsaw, or machete, while terrifying enough, can be defeated or avoided. But who can deny an evil that has latched itself inside a person?

The horror film will never die because fear is something we all tend to cater to as an emotion. And it's likely because much like something humorous, fear is an impulse action that happens often beyond our control. But fear is a double edged sword of an emotion. It keeps you out of danger, that unmistakable feeling that something isn't quite right and you should consider fighting or fleeing. Flight or fight as it's called. Or the more dangerous and far more likely of possibilities to come to pass, fear turns one into the very monster they were so afraid of.

If there's any possible secret or explanation for the questionable or horrible things people can be capable of, you have to look at where the motivations came from. And most of the time, those motivations are rooted in fear. It’s no great secret that each and every one of us are afraid of something. A political “ism” gaining power, a foreign invader from another country or another world, and perhaps most palpable of all fears, something getting inside us. Fear and paranoia are emotions just as real as love and understanding, yet it is fear and paranoia we shamelessly choose to express more openly.

All explained as human nature, yet within the last 25+ years, with the birth of the Internet and ever changing social media platforms, fear and paranoia have found fostering and nurturing on a greater scale than ever before. Fears that can and have been digitized, organized, and weaponized. Fear of change, of loss, of violation, and the fear that we don't know or can control ourselves as well as we'd like to believe.

The Thing can then be read as a political statement filled with metaphor of the terrible ways people often react to something they can't understand, and the paranoia that undermines a united front. When the slightest possibility arises that our fellow man, might in truth, not be who or what we thought they were, we pick apart every little behavior and idiosyncrasy all in an effort develop to support our newfound fear of that person and form a justification for the evil we do upon them

Paranoia runs deep throughout the entirety of John Carpenter's The Thing, right from the moment it starts. And by the end we're not entirely certain if the horror has truly come to an end. Truth is, it likely didn't. And if you ever got a chance to play the video game, for those of you that remember it anyway, you know that it didn't. At least until the game's hopeful ending.

As frightening and viscous as these films might be, they are so important to understand. This world is full of things we can't explain or begin to understand, and we ourselves are not entirely what we seem. A film like The Thing shows that no matter how united we may seem, there's always a snake in the grass. And also how easily suspicion, misplaced or otherwise, can turn even the best of friends into mortal enemies, and undo the fabric of a group, a nation, and in the end, ourselves.