Childs is the thing at the end, and here's why:
1. Before he goes missing, Childs is last seen wearing a blue snow jacket. When he reappears after the camp has been destroyed, he's now wearing a beige/tan jacket. The Thing rips through clothing when it assimilates you, so it would have to find a new jacket for Childs to wear after it tore through the blue snow jacket.
2. The last time we see Childs (when MacReady tells him "if you see Blair, burn 'em.), Childs is dozing off on guard duty and doesn't hear MacReady walk into the room. As Mac leaves the room, a clearly sleep-deprived Childs flutters his eyelids in an attempt to stay awake. Later on, the camera shows the door to the basement wide open, panning up to where Childs was before but no longer is. This is to show that someone (Blair) came from the basement and snuck up on Childs as he accidentally fell back to sleep while on guard watch.
3. Childs's story about chasing Blair into the storm and then getting lost doesn't add up because Nauls and Garry see Childs leave his guard post with Blair nowhere in sight. Childs likely wouldn't have seen Blair off in the distance because the stormy conditions, dense snowing, and dead black night-time offer little to no visibility without light. Also, why chase Blair into the open plains of Antarctica at the dead of night during a violent snowstorm? That's a death sentence for a mortal human. You could argue that Childs may not have been thinking clearly, but I don't think a sleep-deprived man would run gungho into a snowstorm at night.
4. FILM SYMBOLISM: The first time we see MacReady, he's playing a game of chess with his computer. The computer wins, and he proceeds to pour alcohol into the "cheating bitch". The last time we see MacReady, he gives the same alcohol to Childs. This is to mirror the first time we see him on camera; he's pouring alcohol into a cheating bitch, though this time the cheating bitch is none other than Childs.
reply
share
Ace_Spade (9544)
3 years ago
These are really good points, particularly the jacket (I'm also a sucker for film symbolism), but I have two sticking points.
The first is that the Thing doesn't attack Mac. Mac says earlier that if everybody except him were a "Thing", they'd kill him openly. While this is speculation on his part, it's logical, and it doesn't make sense to me that the Thing wouldn't. You could argue that it does after the fade-out, or that it's conserving energy or something, but a delay in striking for any reason isn't observed throughout the rest of the movie, particularly as Mac is so resourceful and dangerous. Why let him live? What if he's got more booze and uses it to immolate you? Just eat him.
The second is more film symbolism. The biggest theme of the film is the paranoia, largely relating to the Cold War, and a big part of Cold War paranoia is the understanding that the "Other Guys" aren't that different, they just have a different government. That's all. I think that the message of the movie is stronger if they're both human and their mutual trust is shattered forever, preventing them from even trying to survive because the real threat here isn't the monster, but the broken accord of friends and colleagues. That doesn't logically justify Childs not being the Thing, but at the very least it counters point four.
reply
share