10 More Horror Movie Villains With Absolutely No Motive

John Carpenter's The Thing may have been misunderstood on arrival, but has flourished in the years since, spreading its slimy, scaly self all over contemporary pop culture and staking a claim to its own seminal place in the horror canon. At the heart of it all is the titular creature, which terrorises a scientific base in Antarctica, hunting the research and security personnel down to a man - helicopter pilot and all-round badass RJ MacReady (Kurt Russell).

Now, making sense of the needs and demands of extra-terrestrial life can be challenging at the best of times, but it's just downright impossible when they're trying to kill you and your friends and wear your faces. In true Lovecraftian fashion, the Thing absorbs people and animals, consuming them and making them part of itself, before infiltrating the ranks of its next unsuspecting victims.

While this may speak to some kind of larger agenda, it is never clear what this is. In fact, there is some suggestion that the Thing itself may not know its own identity or motives once it has imitated another lifeform, with only its instinctively destructive and murderous nature spurring it on.