10 Alternate Scenes That Completely Change Famous Movies
4. The Thing Lives - The Thing
John Carpenter's the Thing is a masterclass in horror. The film's violent and terrifying body horror is only matched by the creeping sense of paranoia that comes from not knowing who has been replaced by the shapeshifter.
It's a feeling that is perfectly encapsulated in the film's ambiguous ending. MacReady and Childs both sit and share a drink as their camp burns to the ground, each of them (and the audience) unsure if the other is human or not.
The vagueness of the ending has ensured that it is still talked about to this day, with theories and debates ranging over whether or not one of them was the Thing and whether or not the other one knew.
Regardless of which (if either) of them is the monster though, it's a pretty bleak ending, with both characters doomed to freeze to death. However, it could have been even bleaker and far less ambiguous.
In an alternate ending that was also shot, the team definitively fail to stop the Thing. The final shot of the movie shows the camp burning as the Thing takes the shape of a husky and runs off into the wilderness to find a new group to terrorise, mirroring the beginning of the film.