"The Thing", John Carpenter

If there is a way to describe the distrust that the human being feels towards himself, John Carpenter found it. "The Thing", released in  1982, speaks of this. The freezing and lonely desolation of Antarctica, where the story takes place, is the stage for a situation perfectly congenial to the story to tell: a small group of humans trapped in a hostile place and forced to come to terms with their inner selves and their fears. It matters little that the film is freely inspired by the 1951 masterpiece "The thing from another world" and that there is an alien creature accidentally awakened by a Norwegian research team, just as it is not essential to talk about the plot and uncertainty which increases minute by minute. Tension and fear are constant presences for the spectator, who finds himself in between disturbing scenes and moments in which the splatter and disgust are masters. The analogic special effects are wonderful, as is the soundtrack of a masterful Ennio Morricone. All the grotesque forms assumed by the  Alien perfectly succeed in their intent to amaze and distress the spectator, without howerver never exceeding in trash or splatter representations. Carpenter’s camera direction is extremely clean, following closely the characters and their visual expressions  in pivotal moments, hence almost replacing completely the necessity of dialogues. The director is skilled in instilling doubts in the viewers  at every moment till reaching the movie wonderful final. The last scenes of this film are a perfect representation of Carpenter’s vision: the distrust in man, the fear of the others, the unmotivated hatred driven only by the human instinct of survival and the selfish desire to prevail over others. "The Thing" is a marvelous and horrifying metaphor of the modern world and the society in which we live, but it is  also a fun, enjoyable and frightening sight for the eyes that makes it an undisputed masterpieces of science fiction of all time.