10 Bleakest Endings In Horror Movies
7. The Thing
John Carpenter is probably one of the greatest genre directors to have ever lived; Halloween, Big Trouble In Little China, They Live, Assault on Precinct 13, The Fog and many more. In the 1970s and 1980s John Carpenter was one of the best director’s working. At the height of his powers he made The Thing. Designed to be a remake of 1951s The Thing From Another World, Carpenter’s version would stick more closely to the source material on which it was based.
The film centres on a team of researchers in the Antarctic who discover a shapeshifting alien in their midst. The creature is capable of perfectly mimicking anybody and before long the crew are feeling the paranoia set in.
Whilst the film, deservedly so, gets a lot of credit for its ground breaking special effects, the true cornerstone of The Thing is the way it gradually notches up the tension and gives the crew more and more reason to distrust one another. This culminates in a sombre ending in which MacReady (Kurt Russell) and Childs (Keith David) sit alone in the snow as their base burns. Neither able to take their eye off the other for fear that person may be The Thing!