I forgot to mention: hell yeah. I’m in complete agreement. I’ve never been able to stomach E.T., and I was 12 when it came out, so that movie is practically made for me.
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Tried to watch it once, fell asleep. That’s only happened in two films. That, and Dead Poet’s Society.
Based on the definition of existentialism, I take “existential horror” to mean a horror movie in which the protagonist is responsible for making choices about what is happening to and around him. So, “There’s a Thing attacking us. How can we try to stop it?”
The opposite, I guess, would be a horror movie in which everything that happens to the characters is predetermined by mystic/religious forces beyond their control, and they have effectively no control over it:
http://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_existentialism.html
“Existentialism is a philosophy that emphasizes individual existence, freedom and choice. It is the view that humans define their own meaning in life, and try to make rational decisions despite existing in an irrational universe. It focuses on the question of human existence, and the feeling that there is no purpose or explanation at the core of existence. It holds that, as there is no God or any other transcendent force, the only way to counter this nothingness (and hence to find meaning in life) is by embracing existence.
Thus, Existentialism believes that individuals are entirely free and must take personal responsibility for themselves (although with this responsibility comes angst, a profound anguish or dread). It therefore emphasizes action, freedom and decision as fundamental, and holds that the only way to rise above the essentially absurd condition of humanity (which is characterized by suffering and inevitable death) is by exercising our personal freedom and choice (a complete rejection of Determinism).”
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thanks so much for sharing this. it was truly a treat to read sitting here alone… in the dark.
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Well, it is a definition. More literally though, it means only “pertaining to existence”. It need not fit an ideal of traditional existential philosophy at all. For instance, it is perfectly legit to tell a story about a person overwhelmed by supernatural forces as an existentialist critique. A product of this kind of thought - like any other - need not be an exemplar of its own philosophy. Accepting it at face value also suggests that we are working from predefined notions of what concepts such as self, existence, and determinacy might be. I find existentialism to be a useful frame of mind, but this utility means more to me than would merely identifying with it as a school of philosophy.
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I never understood the hatred for The Thing… was it just ahead of its time? I do seem to recall some reviews from Ebert during the 80s that were giving horror movies bad ratings not for being boring, badly-written or having poor effects, but just for being horror movies at all, as though he felt that just making a movie in the horror genre was some kind of immoral offense and it was his job to shame them. His later comment that “video games can never be art” displayed a similar bias and made it clear that he had no objectivity when it came to certain mediums and genres. Still, while influential, he was just one guy- where did all the rest of this negativity come from? I haven’t heard anyone say a single negative thing about The Thing in the past 20 years, aside from a valid criticism about its lack of female characters. Everyone seems to feel it’s a classic. What changed?
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Well, look at the audience reaction in the OP. Screaming and vomiting. And I think most critics were so repulsed by the makeup FX that they couldn’t get past their disgust.
But Carpenter and Bottin broke new ground with this movie. Now that we’ve seen even more revolting displays of viscera and woefully abused human flesh and bone, it’s easier to appreciate the atmosphere, the taut writing, and pretty dang nifty performances of the cast.
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My view is perhaps simpler. Like ISIS being an “existential threat” to Israel (that is, a direct threat to its very existence), I think of this movie as existential horror in terms of the Thing being, in the nature of Lovecraft’s Old Ones, a threat not just to your physical life, but to everything that makes you you. It doesn’t care who you are, to which gods you pray, what your report cards said, whether you’re popular with your peers, how much money you have, or what you’d like to do with the rest of your life. It just wants to grab you, absorb your cells, convert them for its own use… and reproduce and grow. You are food, a host, a mask… and nothing more. Your immediate fear might be that you’ll be killed, and eaten… maybe not quite in that order. But there’s also the possibility that once you’re assimilated, you’ll be used as a mask to lure your friends and loved ones to meet the same fate. It perverts everything that you hold dear.
Brrrr.
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Are there any scary films other than The Thing and Alien?
American Werewolf in London… hmmm, not really.
Jacob’s Ladder is weird but not really scary, same for Angel Heart. Uh, The Exorcist… I don’t know what the hell anybody finds scary in it.
You’d think something by Cronenberg would fit the bill but there’s nothing to the same degree.
I’m not saying there aren’t good horror films out there but actually scary? Terrifying?
It’s such a damn high water mark. The tide doesn’t really get up there all that often I guess.
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I think it helps to be Catholic for that one. 
The Thing is the only movie to scare the absolute shite out of me and I watched in on VHS in the middle of the day. Terrifying.
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[quote=“miasm, post:50, topic:68347, full:true”]
Are there any scary films other than The Thing and Alien?
[…]
I’m not saying there aren’t good horror films out there but actually scary? Terrifying?
It’s such a damn high water mark. The tide doesn’t really get up there all that often I guess.
[/quote]I’ve never found either Alien or The Thing to be all that scary, myself. Maybe it’s their scifi setting causing a level of emotional distance, but they never really made me feel personally scared.
I did find The Ring to inspire a level of terror, though. Also, some of the Slenderman stuff (like the early Marble Hornets entries before it became a meandering mess). For me, I think it has more to do with happening to normal people in a realistic setting that makes a movie truly terrifying.
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I sort of understand what you mean, I think.
But ghosts are more realistic than aliens? Or The Antarctic is more realistic than Japan? Hehe. But probably we just enjoy different genres, I am for sure a committed scifi fan. And I guess the Ring is more… everyday than a research station off in the back of beyond. Did you like ‘It Follows’?
Probably part of the problem is I’ve seen The Thing and Alien far too often to actually find them scary any more and also, I was quite young when I saw both, so probably I just won’t ever find anything as terrifying as those films again.
Although now that I think about it the last film that left me breathless was Gravity. Not a horror film but the whole drifting in space thing really left me with the chills.
If someone could cross that sensation with some kind of deep psychological, body-horror ambassador from the mind-numbing, eldritch mausolea I mentioned earlier, perhaps it might give me more than a shiver.
Maybe someone can tap into the Lovecraftian space demon thing like Event Horizon but… well… good, it might earn some cash.
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Ha- that’s the best possible way to let this film shit you up, I’d love to watch The Thing in a remote snowy locale. I had a pal who watched the Blair Witch Project on his own in his house in the middle of the woods. The only way to undo his trauma was to camp out and film our own version which was much less scary.
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I saw the headline and thought we were in for pics of Cory’s wardrobe…
That’s fascinating that Carpenter was inspired by the AIDS paranoia of the time. Years later I would look at the original Poltergeist and think it was, in a way, about AIDS even though I don’t think that was the filmmakers’ intention or even something on their minds. The Freeling family notices odd things at first, but they’re afraid to talk to their neighbors openly about it. They retreat into their home and only turn to professional help when they lose their daughter. They don’t do anything to deserve being tormented. And then there’s Zelda Rubinstein who worked with the L.A.Cares campaign and said she suffered professionally for it. She was ahead of the curve in Hollywood where red ribbons would, a few years later, become ubiquitous. She’s really what made me make the connection.
So it’s really not all that surprising that Carpenter was inspired by AIDS paranoia but didn’t mention the connection at the time of the film’s release.
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The game of The Thing was pretty terrific, I think it continued on from where the film ended. It was quite sophisticated for the time, there was a careful rationing of health and ammo, a need to burn the creatures and shoot them to stop them regenerating, and the squad system. You’d have a bunch of other survivors with you but you were never sure which of them was a monster, and they didn’t know if you were one. If they were panicked and useless to the team you could earn their trust by giving them a weapon. I don’t think the game Dead Space would have been quite the amazing horror it is if it were not for The Thing and the game of it.
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[quote=“miasm, post:53, topic:68347, full:true”]
I sort of understand what you mean, I think.
But ghosts are more realistic than aliens? Or The Antarctic is more realistic than Japan? Hehe. But probably we just enjoy different genres, I am for sure a committed scifi fan. And I guess the Ring is more… everyday than a research station off in the back of beyond. Did you like ‘It Follows’?
[/quote]I doubt it’s not an issue of us liking different genres - I am a die-hard scifi fan.
It’s not that ghosts are more realistic than aliens - it’s more the issue of who and where they happen to the protagonist/victims. I am not a research scientist in the Antarctic, nor am I on a spaceship. In my two examples, this is something that is happening to ordinary people in their own homes. After the suspension of disbelief in the core concept (a ghost, an alien, etc.) there is that next issue of the setting that distances me from it. If The Thing were set in a suburb somewhere instead of a remote research station I’d probably find it a lot more terrifying - but then, it’d be a different movie (a.k.a. Invasion of the Body Snatchers).
I have not yet seen It Follows, but I keep hearing about it so I may end up watching that one soon.
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If English isn’t your first language I’m sorry, that sentence was appalling and probably wouldn’t translate well.
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And you call yourself a scifi fan!?!?
I’m just yankin’ your chain man. I totally understand. You just don’t like scifi as much as me… LOL sorry, I can’t stop 
But really I do get what your saying. Touchstones are important for getting inside your head and the more familiar the mis en scene, the more ordinary and relatable the characters, the more their story bleeds into your world.
I think you 'll dig It Follows. Plays with a lot of the conventions you’d find in exactly the kind of film we are talking about and gets a lot of it right.
Hmmm, got me thinking. I think that Alien and The Thing both share this ability to get inside you. Like, literally, as well as metaphorically.
There’s got to be some way of turning that invasion into the mind up to eleven. I’ve often thought there must be some way of leveraging the kind of memetic attack mechanisms that ideologies and especially religious ideologies employ to get in there and mess around with your programming. Would it be possible to design a film with a complex, a meme-plex that really does start to overwrite ones internal dialogue, that gives the viewer some kind of supernatural thrill in the same way as those who believe so much that they are willing to fight and die for their beliefs?
MKUltra the film anyone?
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