@JustinJackFlash said:

@Drooch said:

No. It’s a matter of degree and context. A splatter movie like Braindead is, quite rightly, a 90 minute gore-fest. The Thing is much more sophisticated -

There's no reason a film can't be both.

It can do both but I find one detracts from the other when it’s to this degree. I wouldn’t change the film, but it’s worth asking the question - did the filmmaker make the strongest choice given the material?

as well as confusion.

The confusion is part of the paranoia. We don't need hard knowledge of what exactly is going on. The unexplained is part of the unease.

Logic gaps don’t add to paranoia, they threaten to repel an audience by having them ask ‘why is the creature doing x when it has the power to achieve it’s objective far more efficiently with y?’

@Drooch said:

It can do both but I find one detracts from the other when it’s to this degree. I wouldn’t change the film, but it’s worth asking the question - did the filmmaker make the strongest choice given the material?

Not everybody is so repelled by gore. And this film is made for people who aren't. It is -at heart- a monster B-movie. A very smart one. And that's what I like about it and I'm guessing it's what many others like about it too. I like that the film has balls and is clever.

Logic gaps don’t add to paranoia, they threaten to repel an audience by having them ask ‘why is the creature doing x when it has the power to achieve it’s objective far more efficiently with y?’

I think another poster mentioned above that what the monster was capable of was merely speculation by it's confused prey. A confusion we are supposed to experience ourselves.

@Drooch said:

@FlyingSaucersAreReal said:

Tentacle osmosis is the rapid way to take someone over. Otherwise they end up like that one dude and end up feeling sick, giving people warning that something might be wrong.

So do you reckon he got slow-infected by dog saliva? If so, it begs the question - does The Thing transform your cells into Thing cells, or does it digest your information via tentacles then replicate you with its own presumably limited number of cells?

Could be. Maybe one of the dogs nipped him at some point. I think if you are infected and slowly taken over by the thing, it happens in a similar way to the rapid way, except that it's starting very small, with just a few cells. Gradually as the person increasingly becomes another thing, they start to feel uneasy, like something isn't right.

@Drooch said:

The mystery, tension and existential unease is broken, though, by the amount of stomach churning imagery, which instead creates disgust, as well as confusion. For example, why doesn’t the creature spray Thing-juice at everyone, like it did with the dogs? What does Thing-juice do?

But that is exactly the point - we don't know how it works. The characters are speculating. They might be wrong. They might be right. We don't know. The mysterious aspect adds to the paranoia.

Also, disgust is supposed to be created. What the Thing does is a gross violation of the human body. It ups the ante of what is happening. If the transformations were gory for the sake of gore itself and their ONLY aim were to gross the viewers out, I would agree with you. But they are creative and almost flawless in their execution, and they add value to the movie. Yes, the Thing is disgusting. But so is the alien in Alien. Didn't you find the chestbursting scene disgusting in that film? If not, I'm curious - what is the difference for you between say the chest chomp scene and the scene from Alien?

The Op is trolling. He/she doesn't like horror movies that's why he/she is picking apart one of the best horror movies ever made.But we all should go ahead and glorify the movie and discuss what makes it a great film because it deserves to be.

@rarebreed said:

The Op is trolling. He/she doesn't like horror movies that's why he/she is picking apart one of the best horror movies ever made.

The Op isn't trolling. He just has a different opinion to us. That's how the old conversation and debate works.

@JustinJackFlash said:

@rarebreed said:

The Op is trolling. He/she doesn't like horror movies that's why he/she is picking apart one of the best horror movies ever made.

The Op isn't trolling. He just has a different opinion to us. That's how the old conversation and debate works.

His opinion that there is too much gore in an R -rated horror monster movie. Riiiigghht

Well to play devil's advocate, there wasn't too much gore in Halloween: another iconic body-count horror movie that's rated R.

@A-Dubya said:

Yeah. I like the film, and always have. I agree though some of the stuff with the dogs always seems too much to me. It's disgusting how the dog is exploding with tentacles or whatever. Always grosses me out, but I somehow get through it.

It looks unreal, so it didn't bug me much. The autopsy now pushes me a little close to the edge....

OP is not the only one who points out how gross the gore is.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/cinema-swirl/id900702441?mt=2#episodeGuid=tag%3Ablogger.com%2C1999%3Ablog-4875586764764503734.post-883477655153508021

Good movie, very nice atmosphere and story/plot. Just a lot of yucky, nasty effects. Really well done.

@volkstraum said:

@Drooch said:

It also makes the threat confusing - does the alien 'become' you by simply touching you or dropping one of its cells into your tea (which makes it extremely powerful and virtually unstoppable), OR does it have to go through the whole disgusting aggressive tentacled penetration procedure with the blood and screaming? The film needs to pick one and run with it so that we can understand what our heroes are up against. It appears to be able to do both, and if that's the case, then why even bother with the clunky tentacle screaming method?

The audience is shown the tentacle-osmosis sequences in the third person omniscent. We see how the creature really works ... while the characters try to piece the puzzle together while literally in the dark. They suppose things like "one-cell" rule and use computer simulations to make a best-guess. Their conclusions could be false and just a cause of further paranoia.

McCready's blood test occupies a kind of middle ground. But I suppose while the cellular level is indeed in communication with the creature-agent, single cells alone are not enough to overtake a host rapidly. Perhaps a one-cell might work like the FLU but the immune system of the host could fend it off.

Hence the need for tentacle-osmosis in the dark of the night

You got it!

@A-Dubya said:

OP is not the only one who points out how gross the gore is.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/cinema-swirl/id900702441?mt=2#episodeGuid=tag%3Ablogger.com%2C1999%3Ablog-4875586764764503734.post-883477655153508021

Good movie, very nice atmosphere and story/plot. Just a lot of yucky, nasty effects. Really well done.

You haven't seen yucky, nasty effects until you've watched Slither and Virus.

I think everything is right here. this movie is supercreepy, mysterious and intriguing, just like "Alien" (1979)

@tmdb18418769 said:

@JustinJackFlash said:

@rarebreed said:

The Op is trolling. He/she doesn't like horror movies that's why he/she is picking apart one of the best horror movies ever made.

The Op isn't trolling. He just has a different opinion to us. That's how the old conversation and debate works.

His opinion that there is too much gore in an R -rated horror monster movie. Riiiigghht

Deeply foolish and reductive comment. There are degrees of gore within an R-rating and when it’s excessive the primary emotion in the viewer is disgust, not tension. I relish gore in a splatter movie, but The Thing has much more going for it.