Editorials
‘The Thing’ at 40: Looking Back at the Ambitious Video Game Sequel
Would you look at that? The Thing turns the big 4-0 this week. John Carpenter’s incredible sci-fi masterpiece, which most of the public brushed off in its initial release, has gone on to become one of the most beloved horror movies of all time. We’re not here to talk about that though. I’m here to take you on a journey back to the lesser known video game from 2002 and how it (at the time) was one of the more ambitious “next-generation” games of all.
Around the turn of the millennium, Universal Interactive was looking through the back catalog of IP owned by the studio and decided Carpenter’s The Thing was primed for a game adaptation due to its ambiguous ending for which a video game could expand upon (side note: very surprised they didn’t try to make a Halloween game). With Konami as a publisher they were off to the races on developing the title in hopes of a 2002 release for the 20th anniversary of the film. After being impressed with their 2000 video game Evolva, Konami and Universal enlisted the help of company Computer Artworks to develop the game. Surprisingly in an era of bad and rushed movie adapted games, Computer Artworks were given relatively free reign on the project.
The game follows Captain J.F. Blake, the leader of Bravo team. After the events of the film, two U.S. Special Forces teams are sent to investigate the lost U.S. and Norwegian Antarctic camps and uncover what happened. The game starts off quick too, dropping you right in the middle of the action seeing the gory aftermath of all that transpired as you search to piece it all together. This is where the most interesting element of the game play comes into play: the fear/trust system. If you’ve heard anything about this game chances are this is what you’ve heard about the most. Throughout the game Blake will be able to lead a team of AI-controlled NPCs through the environment and give them different commands. Soldiers have higher health and better weapons and are able to thrive in combat encounters, medics keep the team alive by having unlimited heal packs (take *that* Resident Evil), and engineers repair various environmental obstacles.
The trick is, these NPC teammates won’t always trust you. They suspect you to be the thing itself. When their trust is low they can do actions like straight up ignoring you, or even worse when they fear you enough they’ll even attack you themselves and you’ll be forced to take action against them. You can earn their trust by giving them ammo and health packs, leading the charge into battle, or like in the film giving yourself a blood test in front of them. They start distrusting you if you neglect them, let them get injured, or even worse: accidentally hit them with a stray bullet with the game’s unforgiving friendly fire. The most random aspect though is the infection system, in which one or multiple members of your squad become infected by the Thing and transforms into a hideous nightmare-esque creature from the film.
Throughout the game Blake starts to put together the events of the original film (and to an extent the 2011 prequel that hadn’t been made yet) and eventually uncovers a secret conspiracy of a corporation called Gen-Inc. who have a team there conducting scientific experiments and research on the Thing. Led by Dr. Sean Farady (who’s played by John Carpenter), they’re out to prove that the Thing is controllable. Ultimately it’s revealed that Blake’s commander, Colonel Whitley, has plans to use the Thing as a biological weapon and as a cure for his terminal cancer; subverting the expectations of the film and having an open betrayer/infected in all of the action. Eventually Blake has a showdown with the Thing-infected Whitley at the Thing’s original spaceship, defeating him and saving the world from a massive outbreak. And closing the loop on this makeshift “trilogy”
Given these elements the film not only continues the film in a fitting way but also matches the tension and anarchy that the Carpenter classic is known for. Years before the board game The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31 did it, this was the place to get your hidden identity game fix with a well known license. The game was released in 2002 to almost instant success, selling over a million copies across PC, Xbox, and Playstation 2. Fans and critics were captivated with its more action-oriented take on the horror genre, something that (at the time) still had a heavy focus on survival and puzzle solving. Best of all, fans loved the reveal of the fates of Childs and MacReady from the original film. I won’t spoil it here but you don’t learn the fate of one of them until the very end of the game and it’s a surprising reveal, to say the least.
The Thing ultimately is a game that translates the Carpenter film into fun gameplay mechanics and tells a cohesive yet faithful continuation of its source material. Unfortunately with Konami losing the rights to the film and Computer Artworks going under in 2003, a sequel to the game never made it past the proof of concept phase. Even worse the game has yet to get a re-release of any kind, causing The Thing to fall into relative obscurity in recent years.
If you have the means (aka an old console lying around like I do), I highly implore you to seek out a copy of The Thing, which remains a wonderful movie-based video game 20 years later.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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