It’s one of cinema’s great mysteries: who really is at the end of John Carpenter’s The Thing?

Spoilers – Warning, the article below contains potential spoilers. If you do not want to know its contents, please do not read the following…

What’s in the FedEx package that Tom Hanks delivers to the end of the world? What words does Bill Murray whisper into Scarlett Johansson’s ear in the final scene of Lost in Translation? What are the mysterious contents of the bag carried by Vincent Vega and Jules Winfield in Pulp Fiction?

In cinema, it sometimes happens that we come out of the movie with a painful question in our head. The Thing, a mesmerizing horror classic directed by John Carpenter in 1982, is one of those feature films that still haunts audiences long after the screening, especially the mysterious final sequence.

In the final moments of the film, as the rest of their team is slashed one after the other by the shape-shifting creature and the research station burns down, Childs (Keith David) and MacReady (Kurt Russell) look each other in the eye. while sharing a bottle of scotch and laughing nervously.

The same psychosis that permeated the entire feature film continues over and over as the two men continue to mistrust each other. It is very likely that one of them still has the item. but which one It is with this dire question that the film ends and John Carpenter chooses to send his audience home. After all, the main theme of The Thing is paranoia, it almost makes sense that the audience would still be subject to it after the film is over.

“John Carpenter and I worked for a long time on the ending of this film. We wanted to bring the audience back to where they started. Ultimately, this is the position that the characters find themselves in. They know absolutely nothing about everything. “Kurt Russell said at the Huffington Post microphone in 2016.

However, over the years, most viewers can’t bear to be in such limbo, and many theories have started to flourish on the Internet. According to one of the most famous of them, it is Childs who is the thing. Indeed, unlike MacReady, he doesn’t inhale smoke in the final sequence – even though he’s outside in the middle of Antarctica – which might suggest he’s now extraterrestrial in nature.

Looking at the scene (above) from this angle, it’s almost obvious! But according to the film’s cinematographer Dean Cundy, things may not be that simple. Indeed, the latter stated that throughout the film we could see a special glow in the pupils of the characters who were protecting the object, and therefore MacReady was suspicious in the last scene.

An intervention that John Carpenter didn’t like very much: “ I do not know. He has no idea. it turns on the lights”– answered the director at ComicBook.com.

“Yeah, I know. I know who’s the deal and who’s not after all. And no, I can’t tell you. Sorry.”

To sum it up, there are definitely answers to the fans’ questions, but the filmmaker flatly refuses to answer them. Therefore, it is up to the public to form their own opinion on this topic.

So who do you think is Childs or MacReady at the end of the movie?

(Re)discover our show dedicated to the final series of The Thing…