Dean Cundey Reveals Clue to Hotly-Debated Ending of The Thing
John Squires
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At the end of John Carpenter’s The Thing, are MacReady and Childs both human, or is one of them infected? It’s a question that us horror fans have all debated for years, and we all have our own answers to it, but the reality is that there isn’t a definitive answer. Or is there…?
Speaking with cinematographer Dean Cundey for a commentary track that will appear on Scream Factory’s upcoming Blu-ray release of The Thing, Rob Galluzzo unearthed a very interesting tidbit about the film for Blumhouse.com – and it may reveal the answer to a question we never thought we’d have an answer to.
Cundey relayed that Carpenter came up with a subtle way to show which characters were infected and which weren’t, and the key is all in their eyes. As he explained to Galluzzo, the non-infected characters always have a little gleam in their eye that the infected ones do not.
“You’ll notice there’s always an eye light, we call it, a little gleam in the eye of the actor. It gives life,” said Cundey. “But there is no eye light (on Palmer). Let’s make it look subtle like he’s different and the audience won’t know until later. So he has dead eyes.”
What does this have to do with the ending of the film? Well, as Galluzzo points out in his article, MacReady appears to have the trademark eye light in the final scene, while Childs’ eyes appear to be, as Cundey put it, “dead.” If the secret lies in the eyes, that would strongly suggest that Childs is infected.
Be sure to head over to Blumhouse for more on this fascinating discovery!
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