The ThingMovies like The Thing
- Key Features:
- Alien invasion, Paranoia, Isolation, Survival horror, Shape-shifter, Antarctica, Body horror, Science fiction, Monster, Mistrust, Claustrophobia, Practical effects, Cult classic, Violence-high
- Tone:
- serious, suspense-driven, gritty
- Target Audience:
- Horror fans, Sci-fi enthusiasts, Cult film aficionados, Suspense lovers
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Dread → Paranoia
The Thing

A research team in Antarctica is hunted by a shape-shifting alien that assumes the appearance of its victims.
The Thing
When paleontologist Kate Lloyd travels to an isolated outpost in Antarctica for the expedition of a lifetime, she joins an international team that unearths a remarkable discovery. Their elation quickly turns to fear as they realize that their experiment has freed a mysterious being from its frozen prison. Paranoia spreads like an epidemic as a creature that can mimic anything it touches will pit human against human as it tries to survive and flourish in this spine-tingling thriller.

A crew of scientists arrives on a far, cold planet to examine archaic artifacts of unknown origin. They discover that their German enemies already have a ship there. When they seek their help after a failed landing, they only find the Germans’ bodies, obviously slaughtered by one of the archaic creatures, awoken to new life. Now the alien is after them.

Scientists and US Air Force officials fend off a blood-thirsty alien organism while investigating at a remote arctic outpost.

During its return to the earth, commercial spaceship Nostromo intercepts a distress signal from a distant planet. When a three-member team of the crew discovers a chamber containing thousands of eggs on the planet, a creature inside one of the eggs attacks an explorer. The entire crew is unaware of the impending nightmare set to descend upon them when the alien parasite planted inside its unfortunate host is birthed.

The first manned expedition to Mars is invaded by an unknown life form, which stows away on the rescue ship.

In Arborville, California, three high school students try to protect their hometown from a gelatinous alien life form that engulfs everything it touches.

A technician brings a frozen specimen of the original Blob back from the North Pole. When his wife accidentally defrosts the thing, it terrorizes the populace-- the local hippies, cops, drunks and bowlers must all face the Blob!

Fifteen years ago, five men were abducted by aliens. Only four returned. Now, these same four men have managed to capture one of the creatures who killed their friend and ruined their lives.

Scientists surgically transform the Creature into an air-breather, but being able to live on land is not enough to make him comfortable with humans. Enraged, he turns his wrath on anyone who comes near as he desperately tries to return to the deep-water world where he truly belongs.

Scientists in Antarctica desperately try to find a cure to a military virus that was released in a plane crash and has wiped out the rest of the world.

A deranged scientist creates a ray that can shrink people down to doll size.

A spacecraft is discovered on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, presumed to be at least 300 years old and of alien origin. A crack team of scientists and experts is assembled and taken to the Habitat, a state-of-the-art underwater living environment, to investigate.

Set in the 22nd century, when a battered salvage ship sends out a distress signal, the seasoned crew of the rescue hospital ship Nova-17 responds. What they find is a black hole--that threatens to destroy both ships--and a mysterious survivor whose body quickly mutates into a monstrous and deadly form.

A small-town doctor learns that the population of his community is being replaced by emotionless alien duplicates.

A former astronaut helps a government agent and a police detective track the source of mysterious alien pod spores, filled with lethal flesh-dissolving acid, to a South American coffee plantation controlled by alien pod clones.

An astronaut exposed to cosmic rays outside of Saturn's rings returns to Earth and begins to melt away. Escaping from the hospital, he wanders around the backwoods looking for human flesh to eat.

A group of researchers in Antarctica are abducted by a platoon of masked soldiers and dragged into a hidden continent in the center of the Earth. There, they discover that surviving Nazi soldiers are plotting an invasion of Earth to revive the Third Reich.

A top secret experiment intended to produce a superhuman has gone terribly wrong. Now the creators, trapped in a remote desert outpost, are being pursued ruthlessly by their creation.

The first pilot to leave Earth's atmosphere lands, then vanishes; but something with a craving for blood prowls the countryside...

When Environmental Protection Agency inspector Steve Malone travels to a remote military base in order to check for toxic materials, he brings his family along for the ride. After arriving at the base, his teenage daughter Marti befriends Jean Platt, daughter of the base's commander, General Platt. When people at the base begin acting strangely, Marti becomes convinced that they are slowly being replaced by plant-like aliens.

An American airbase in Canada provokes resentment from the nearby residents after fallout from nuclear experiments at the base are blamed for a recent spate of disappearances. A captain from the airbase is assigned to investigate, and begins to suspect that an elderly British scientist who lives near the base and conducts research in the field of mind over matter knows more than he is letting on..

A young man visits his fiancé's estate to discover that her wheelchair-bound scientist father has discovered a meteorite that emits mutating radiation rays that have turned the plants in his greenhouse to giants. When his own wife falls victim to this mysterious power, the old man takes it upon himself to destroy the glowing object with disastrous results.

When the crew of an American tugboat boards an abandoned Russian research vessel, the alien life form aboard regards them as a virus which must be destroyed.

After an earthquake destroys their underwater station, six researchers must navigate two miles along the dangerous, unknown depths of the ocean floor to make it to safety in a race against time.

Paul Dean has created a deadly parasite that is now attached to his stomach. He and his female companion, Patricia Welles, must find a way to destroy it while also trying to avoid Ricus & his rednecks, and an evil government agent named Merchant.

The Earth is invaded by alien parasites—AKA 'slugs'—that ride on people's backs and control their minds.

The Space Shuttle returns to earth, but some of the equipment brought back on it begins to behave strangely. Scientists are unsure what is happening, and decide to take all necessary precautions.

A team of elite commandos on a secret mission in a Central American jungle come to find themselves hunted by an extraterrestrial warrior.

The six-member crew of the International Space Station is tasked with studying a sample from Mars that may be the first proof of extra-terrestrial life, which proves more intelligent than ever expected.

Amalgamated Dairies hires David Rutherford, an FBI man turned industrial saboteur, to investigate a popular new product called “the Stuff,” a new dessert product that is blowing ice cream sales out of the water. Nobody knows how it’s made or what’s in it, but people are lining up to buy it. It's got a delicious flavor to die for!

Suspecting that people are transforming into malevolent shape-shifters, Wyatt flees to New York City to seek out his estranged childhood friend Christian.

In the midst of a tropical storm, the crew of an offshore oil rig must survive the rampage of a creature after invading its undersea habitat.

When Seth Brundle makes a huge scientific and technological breakthrough in teleportation, he decides to test it on himself. Unbeknownst to him, a common housefly manages to get inside the device and the two become one.

In 2047, a group of astronauts are sent to investigate and salvage the starship Event Horizon which disappeared mysteriously seven years before on its maiden voyage. However, it soon becomes evident that something sinister resides in its corridors.

The first manned spacecraft, fired from an English launchpad, is first lost from radar, then roars back to Earth and crashes in a farmer's field, and is found to contain only one of the three men who took off in it; and he is unable to talk but appears to be undergoing a torturous physical and mental metamorphosis.

During a manned mission to Mars, Astronaut Mark Watney is presumed dead after a fierce storm and left behind by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive.

When a young ski team training for the Olympics arrives at the remote and isolated Lost Mountain Ski Resort to focus on training, they're thrilled to find a retired Olympic skier is there to help them train. But their plans are halted when a scientist working at a nearby government lab arrives with the horrifying news that a top secret Government project has produced giant spiders and they have escaped, killing and eating everything in sight.

Aliens in human disguise commandeer a rural airport during a snowstorm. To survive, the people trapped inside must determine which of their own is not of this Earth.

After miners disappear in the Namib Desert, some scientists find their remains and the demonic creature that killed them.

Val McKee and Earl Bassett are in a fight for their lives when they discover that their desolate town has been infested with gigantic, man-eating creatures that live below the ground.

An eighteen-foot grizzly bear figures out that humans make for a tasty treat. As a park ranger tries rallying his men to bring about the bear's capture or destruction, his efforts are thwarted by the introduction of dozens of drunken hunters into the area.

A planet is discovered in the same orbit as Earth's but is located on the exact opposite side of the sun, making it not visible from Earth. The European Space Exploration Council decide to send American astronaut Glenn Ross and British scientist John Kane via spaceship to explore the other planet.

After freak climate and weather events destroy the world around them, a group of rogue scientists attempt to reverse the deadly new ice age.

Dr Simon Helder, sentenced to an insane asylum for crimes against humanity, recognises its director as the brilliant Baron Frankenstein, the man whose work he had been trying to emulate before his imprisonment. Frankenstein utilises Helder's medical knowledge for a project he has been working on for some time. He is assembling a man from vital organs extracted from various inmates in the asylum. And the Baron will resort to murder to acquire the perfect specimens for his most ambitious project ever.

When scientists discover something near Antarctica that appears to be a buried Pyramid, they send a research team out to investigate. Little do they know that they are about to step into a hunting ground where Aliens are grown as sport for the Predator race.

Two guys and a female hitchhiker are terrorized by a monstrous looking man driving a giant monster truck.

In 2176, a Martian police unit is sent to pick up a highly dangerous criminal at a remote mining post. Upon arrival, the cops find the post deserted and something far more dangerous than any criminal — the original inhabitants of Mars, hellbent on getting their planet back.

A space expedition to Uranus is menaced by a giant brain that can make illusions come true.

Experiments in biological warfare have destroyed all but a few remnants of the human race. Alone in a lab, eight students work feverishly to create a vaccine before they are forced outside in search for food. It is then that the surviving scientists discover creatures mutated by the plague. Now they prepare to do battle against their worst fear: The Terror Within.

A team of space marines known as the Rapid Response Tactical Squad, led by Sarge, is sent to a science facility on Mars after somebody reports a security breach. There, they learn that the alert came after a test subject, a mass murderer purposefully injected with alien DNA, broke free and began killing people. Dr. Grimm, who is related to team member Reaper, informs them all that the chromosome can mutate humans into monsters -- and is highly infectious.

The only U.S. Marshal assigned to Antarctica, Carrie Stetko will soon leave the harsh environment behind for good – in three days, the sun will set and the Amundsen-Scott Research Station will shut down for the long winter. When a body is discovered out on the open ice, Carrie's investigation into the continent's first homicide plunges her deep into a mystery that may cost her her own life.

It's 2 A.M. in St. Louis when a routine scientific experiment goes terribly wrong and an explosion shakes the city. A scientific team investigates, clashing with an intergalactic, voltage-devouring creature that vaporizes them.

At a climate research station in the Alps, the scientists are stunned as the nearby melting glacier is leaking a red liquid. It quickly turns to be very special juice — with unexpected genetic effects on the local wildlife.

A DNA experiment on a rare breed of spider is taking place on a NASA space shuttle, when a freak meteor shower engulfs the shuttle, causing everything to go horribly wrong. One survivor is found on the ship and watched over in a secret location deep in the California desert. The problem continues, as the survivor isn't alone, as another deadly spiders climbs out of him and goes on a rampage around the ship. Curious reporter Marci Eyre must now survive, escape and warn everyone before the spider reaches outside the desert.

A violent electrical storm topples power lines into the rain soaked earth that is home for an aggressive breed of worms. The high voltage causes the worms to mutate into larger, hostile hordes of man-eating worms that lie in wait for the residents of Fly Creek.

In 1993, the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence Project receives a transmission detailing an alien DNA structure, along with instructions on how to splice it with human DNA. The result is Sil, a sensual but deadly creature who can change from a beautiful woman to an armour-plated killing machine in the blink of an eye.

Several people disappear from and at the sea. Their bodies are found gnawed to the skeleton, even the marrow is missing. The scientists have no idea which animal could do such things. Dr. Turner begins to suspect that the company which builds a tunnel beneath the bay might have poisoned the environment and caused an octopus to mutate to giant dimensions...

After a violent storm, a dense cloud of mist envelops a small Maine town, trapping David Drayton and his five-year-old son in a local grocery store with other local residents. They soon discover that the mist conceals deadly horrors that threaten their lives, and worse, their sanity.

A dangerous combination of radiation and insecticide causes the unfortunate Scott Carey to shrink, slowly but surely, until he is only a few inches tall. His home becomes a wilderness where he must survive everything from spiders living in the cellar to his beloved cat.

When his best friend and podcast co-host goes missing in the backwoods of Canada, a young guy joins forces with his friend's girlfriend to search for him.

After landing on a mysterious planet, a team of astronauts begin to turn on each other, swayed by the uncertain influence of the planet and its strange inhabitants.

The two remaining crew members of a mining operation in the Arctic Circle fight to survive against an alien creature.

The crew of the colony ship Covenant, bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, discovers what they think is an uncharted paradise but is actually a dark, dangerous world.

The surviving crew of a damaged space harvester has a motion sensor as their only navigation tool leading them to safety, while a creature in the shadows terrorizes them. However, the greatest threat might have been hiding in plain sight.

Industrialist François Delambre is called late at night by his sister-in-law, Helene, who tells him that she has just killed her husband. Reluctant at first, she eventually explains to the police that he invented a matter transportation apparatus and, while experimenting on himself, a fly entered the chamber.

Underwater deep-sea miners encounter a Soviet wreck and bring back a dangerous cargo to their base on the ocean floor with horrifying results. The crew of the mining base must fight to survive against a genetic mutation that hunts them down one by one.

A crew of interplanetary archaeologists is threatened when an alien creature impregnates one of their members, causing her to turn homicidal and murder them one by one.

The residents of San Francisco are becoming drone-like shadows of their former selves, and as the phenomenon spreads, two Department of Health workers uncover the horrifying truth.

After returning from her first space mission, astronaut Sam Walker is placed under NASA’s care at a high security house for rehabilitation and medical testing. However, when disturbing occurrences begin happening around the property, she fears that something extraterrestrial has followed her back to Earth

A research scientist explores the boundaries and frontiers of consciousness. Using sensory deprivation and hallucinogenic mixtures from native American shamans, he explores these altered states of consciousness and finds that memory, time, and perhaps reality itself are states of mind.

A new breed of aggressive, ravenous sharks cracks the frozen ocean floor of an Arctic research station, devouring all who fall through. As the station sinks into frigid waters, those alive must fashion makeshift weapons or suffer the same fate.

A civilian oil rig crew is recruited to conduct a search and rescue effort when a nuclear submarine mysteriously sinks. One diver soon finds himself on a spectacular odyssey 25,000 feet below the ocean's surface where he confronts a mysterious force that has the power to change the world or destroy it.

Scientist Dr. Bradford Crane and army general Thalius Slater join forces to fight an almost invisible enemy threatening America; killer bees that have deadly venom and attack without reason. Disaster movie-master Irwin Allen's film contains spectacular special effects, including a train crash caused by the eponymous swarm.

After escaping with Newt and Hicks from the alien planet, Ripley crash lands on Fiorina 161, a prison planet and host to a correctional facility. Unfortunately, although Newt and Hicks do not survive the crash, a more unwelcome visitor does. The prison does not allow weapons of any kind, and with aid being a long time away, the prisoners must simply survive in any way they can.

Mulder and Scully, now taken off the FBI's X Files cases, must find a way to fight the shadowy elements of the government to find out the truth about a conspiracy that might mean the alien colonization of Earth.

The son of the inventor of a matter-transporter, which turned him into a monster when he tried to transport himself along with a tiny housefly, continues to pursue his father's experiment, while his own two sons attempt to extricate him, themselves and the family name from further disaster and scandal.

Astronauts search for solutions to save a dying Earth by searching on Mars, only to have the mission go terribly awry.

A homicide detective teams up with an evolutionary biologist to hunt a giant creature that is killing people in a Chicago museum.

Washington, D.C. psychologist Carol Bennell and her colleague Dr. Ben Driscoll are the only two people on Earth who are aware of an epidemic running rampant through the city. They discover an alien virus aboard a crashed space shuttle that transforms anyone who comes into contact with it into unfeeling drones while they sleep. Carol realizes her son holds the key to stopping the spread of the plague and she races to find him before it is too late.

Cocky researcher Sebastian Caine is working on a project to make living creatures invisible. Determined to achieve the ultimate breakthrough, Caine pushes his team to move to the next phase — using himself as the subject. The test is a success, but when the process can't be reversed and Caine seems doomed to future without flesh, he starts to turn increasingly dangerous.

While watching for a planet that may collide with earth, scientists stationed in Scotland are approached by a visitor from outer space.

Something nasty is lurking inside a secure storage unit. When a group of people get trapped inside, they need to find a way to get out of a building that's designed to keep things in...

Major Ben McBride organizes a mission to the Antarctic wastes to search for his friend who has been missing in the region for several years. McBride's party find themselves in a world populated by primitive warriors and terrifying prehistoric creatures, all of whom they must evade in order to get back safely

The Lunar Base Ark explores ore and unexpectedly is hit by a meteor shower and has severe damages. Colonel Gerard Brauchman sends the crewwoman Ava Cameron to repair a wing that is full of CO2. Dr. Lance Krauss warns that the gas may cause paranoia and hallucinations. Ava brings a sample of the meteor for analysis and Dr. Krauss finds that there are spores attached to the meteor. Ava accidentally cuts her finger in a sample but she hides the cut from the doctor. Soon Ava gets pregnant and delivers an alien offspring. However, neither Col. Brauchman nor Dr. Kraus believes in her words and they believe that Ava is delusional. He offspring bites the crewman Bruce Johns and the crew discovers that Bruce has been cloned by the alien. Soon they find how dangerous the clone is.

A group of college friends reunite for a trip to the forest, but encounter a menacing presence in the woods that's stalking them.

Detective Klaski investigates the death and mutilation of three men and soon crosses paths with Remy, an entomologist. Soon, he discovers that she is being stalked by a giant shape-shifting insect who is bent on taking over New York.

When an unknown underwater object disables an American nuclear-powered submarine and attacks a submerged Arctic research complex, a scientific expedition flies to the North Pole to investigate these incidents as well as the sudden, inexplicable rise in temperature that threatens to melt the ice cap and flood the surface of the world.

Sandy and Greg are teenagers who go camping, despite warnings not to, with their friends. They soon encounter aliens, who are using the area as a hunting ground.

An experimental submarine with a very experienced crew, the "Siren II" is sent to find out what happened to the "Siren I" after it mysteriously disappeared in a submarine rift. Things go awry when they begin to find things that shouldn't be there...

A pathologist experiments with a deaf-mute woman who is unable to scream to prove that humans die of fright due to an organism he names The Tingler that lives within each person on the spinal cord and is suppressed only when people scream when scared.

The crew of an experimental underwater nuclear base are forced to struggle for their lives when their explorations disturb a creature who threatens to destroy their base.

When the power mysteriously fails, and almost everyone vanishes from a small tourist vessel in the Arctic, fear becomes the master for the three who remain. Forced ashore, the men deteriorate in body and mind until a dark truth emerges that compels them to ally or perish.

A rogue scientist near a small desert town arouses the suspicion of the town's doctor when his lab assistant is found dead from a case of acromegaly, which took only four days to develop. As the doctor investigates, aided by the scientist's new female assistant, they discover that something is devouring local cattle and humans in increasingly large quantities.

When a deadly airborne virus threatens to wipe out the northeastern United States, teacher Elliot Moore and his wife Alma flee from contaminated cities into the countryside in a fight to discover the truth. Is it terrorism, the accidental release of some toxic military bio weapon -- or something even more sinister?

The explorer craft USS Palomino is returning to Earth after a fruitless 18-month search for extra-terrestrial life when the crew comes upon a supposedly lost ship, the USS Cygnus, hovering near a black hole. The ship is controlled by Dr. Hans Reinhardt and his monstrous robot companion, but the initial wonderment and awe the Palomino crew feel for the ship and its resistance to the power of the black hole turn to horror as they uncover Reinhardt's plans.

The arrival in a small mountain town of a dissheveled stranger launches a series of murders committed by some sort of animal. As the town doctor and his daughter attempt to help the stranger, the sheriff investigates the murders; and they uncover a sinister experiment involving two rogue scientists, a car accident victim, his wife and children, and a serum that causes a man to turn into a ravaging werewolf.

In the middle of a routine patrol, officer Daniel Carter happens upon a blood-soaked figure limping down a deserted stretch of road. He rushes the young man to a nearby rural hospital staffed by a skeleton crew, only to discover that patients and personnel are transforming into something inhuman. As the horror intensifies, Carter leads the other survivors on a hellish voyage into the subterranean depths of the hospital in a desperate bid to end the nightmare before it's too late.

A simple man is turned into a genius through the application of computer science.

