Forty years after its release, John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) continues to haunt audiences with its chilling paranoia and dread-filled ambiguity. The film’s notorious ending has solidified its place as one of the most debated conclusions in cinematic history. Left with a bleak tableau of two survivors, an obliterated Antarctic base, and an alien threat that might—or might not—still lurk among them, Carpenter’s finale refuses to tie things up neatly, leaving audiences to wrestle with questions that have no clear answers. Much like the titular shape-shifter that drives the plot, the film’s ending defies definition. It is the stuff of nightmares—and great filmmaking. The final sequence of The Thing zeroes in on two characters: R.J. MacReady (Kurt Russell), the pragmatic helicopter pilot who has emerged as the de facto leader, and Childs (Keith David), a cool-headed mechanic whose survival instincts have kept him alive. The two men, surrounded by the wreckage of their former base and th...