“The Thing” Receives High Praise from Youth as “Among Us” Adaptation
“They did such a great job of humanizing the characters, and maintained the suspense of the source material.”
The 1982 John Carpenter film The Thing seems to be experiencing a new wave of appreciation from the younger generation, though not as a stand-alone sci-fi/horror commentary on the paranoid McCarthyism of its time, but rather as a gritty adaptation of the popular multiplayer game “Among Us”.
The misunderstanding is somewhat valid; both involve crew members working in a remote research facility while having to discern which of them might end up killing the rest of the crew. The Arctic setting of the film has younger fans speculating on whether this unfamiliar location implies the an update of the game with a new snowy map, but the developers have remained silent (albeit confused) on the matter.
Long-time horror fans have attempted to defuse the association between the 40-year-old film and the 2-year-old game, but fans of the game have theorized that the dated aesthetics of the film are the result of a “deep fake” marketing campaign masterfully crafted by the game’s developers. Twitter user @KurtBrussellSprout, an active participant in much of the online discourse regarding this issue, remarks “I’m glad all these young kids are getting into such an awesome movie, but for some reason I just can’t convince them that The Thing came first. With everything that’s gone on in 2020, I’m considering just letting them have this one.”
On the other side of the debate, 16-year-old Twitter user and YouTube video essayist P3nnywiser explains the implications of the film as an “Among Us” adaptation: “Personally I think a movie version of this game should be animated in order to maintain the tonal dissonance of weird Teletubbie-esque creatures murdering each other, but the gritty realism that Carpenter decided on is a fun take. Seeing as I’m not aware of this director’s other work, I’m really looking forward to seeing what he brings to the table. Personally, I would love to see his take on the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise, but that might be a bit too much responsibility for an up-and-coming director like Carpenter.”
