Conclusion

Previous Section: The Final-Scene Identity Question

The fact of a monster that isn’t there, makes this movie is the best monster movie of all time. It is a stroke of paranoiac genius. The creature is a new biological principle of the universe, which takes a person over, and makes it impossible to logically distinguish the victim’s condition before from after, unless one has actually seen it happen. As the film shows, even damning circumstantial evidence (as planted on Mac) does not suffice given the exigencies of the real world. Cognition alone suffices, and only the explanation of the Thing’s nature as given above, explains both why the Thing is intrinsically inimical to mankind, in principle, but also why, in terms of humanity alone among the species possessing cognition, "man is the warmest place to hide."

Next Section: Footnotes