The horror...the horror.
Oct. 23rd, 2023 02:07 pm![[personal profile]](/%20https://www.npmjs.com/package/ocr-https-www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
frogfarmALIENS is not a horror movie because it has a happy, non-nihilistic ending.
THE THING doesn't exactly have a happy ending, and is full of ambiguity and nihilism. Normally I hate both of these. But I love the movie, and the ending and final line are in the pantheon of cinematic immortals. The whole tone of the movie, and the stakes, are exponentially embiggened when the men realize and explicitly state that they're doomed and the only thing they can do -- MUST do -- is try to save the rest of the human race, indeed all life on the planet. As for the question of whether Childs or MacReady are human at the end, I'm in the camp that thinks they're both human -- making the ending even more ironic, the nihilism all the worse, and yet countering that nihilism with a positive vision of man's struggle and temporary triumph against the horror of existence.
PREDATOR kind of splits the difference.
THE THING doesn't exactly have a happy ending, and is full of ambiguity and nihilism. Normally I hate both of these. But I love the movie, and the ending and final line are in the pantheon of cinematic immortals. The whole tone of the movie, and the stakes, are exponentially embiggened when the men realize and explicitly state that they're doomed and the only thing they can do -- MUST do -- is try to save the rest of the human race, indeed all life on the planet. As for the question of whether Childs or MacReady are human at the end, I'm in the camp that thinks they're both human -- making the ending even more ironic, the nihilism all the worse, and yet countering that nihilism with a positive vision of man's struggle and temporary triumph against the horror of existence.
PREDATOR kind of splits the difference.
