The Open Ending Debate The Thing (1982)
The closing two-shot of MacReady and Childs at the burning camp — the bottle of J&B passed between them, neither offering the test, both freezing — is the most-discussed open ending in 1980s American horror cinema. The film does not tell the audience whether Childs is the Thing, whether MacReady is the Thing, or whether either of them is human. The visual evidence has been parsed exhaustively for forty years, in print and online, and no consensus has emerged. The film's refusal to resolve the question is the scene's argument.
The four positions
The debate has produced roughly four positions, none of which has acquired definitive evidence.
Position 1: Childs is the Thing. The most-cited evidence: Childs has been gone from the camp through the events of beats 37–39 (the generator failure, the Blair-Thing rising in the boiler room, the explosion), unaccounted for;b37 b39 some readings of the visual record argue that Childs's breath is not visible in the cold air at the burning camp, while MacReady's is. Childs's hesitation when offered the bottle, his slight smile, and the framing of the two-shot all support the reading.
Position 2: MacReady is the Thing. Less commonly argued. The reading depends on the post-midpoint approach having been a long imitation: MacReady's clothes were found in the furnace;b27 MacReady's tape recording was the Thing producing a record;b24 the dynamite was the Thing's credible threat. The reading is structurally consistent but is rejected by most close readers because MacReady's blood passes the test in beat 34.b34
Position 3: Both are human. The bottle passed between them is the film's gesture of trust restored — both men are exhausted, both are freezing, both are choosing not to run the test because the test no longer matters. The film's emotional register supports this reading.
Position 4: The film does not commit and is not meant to. The verification problem has been the entire structural argument; the wind-down's refusal to resolve is the argument carried through to the end. The audience is the thirteenth man at the table, and the audience does not get to know.
What Carpenter has said
Carpenter has answered the question more times than any other question about his career, with a consistent answer that the question is the wrong question.
"I do not know if Childs is the Thing. I did not film it that way. I did not film it the other way. The whole point of the scene is that you cannot tell. If I told you which one, the film would be a different film. I am not going to tell you." — John Carpenter, The Hollywood Reporter (2022)
"People want me to settle the ending. I am not going to. The ending is what it is on screen. What you see is what you get." — John Carpenter, Cinephilia & Beyond (2018)
What the actors have said
Russell and Keith David have given different answers in different interviews.
"I have my own theory and I am not telling you. I will tell you that the theory I have makes me happy with the picture, and that the theory MacReady has is the theory the audience should leave with." — Kurt Russell, Variety (2018)
"Childs is human. I know this because I played him. He was lost in the storm. He came back. He saw the fire. He sat down. He drank the bottle. He is a man, and he is going to die in the cold like a man. That is my answer." — Keith David, The Talkhouse (2017)
The actors disagree, which is consistent with Carpenter's preferred reading — the verification problem extends to the actors themselves, who cannot know what their character is doing because their character does not know either.
The breath argument
The most-cited piece of textual evidence is the breath visible in the cold air. Dean Cundey lit the scene at low key with backlighting that would have made breath visible against the dark; the visible-breath reading argues that MacReady's breath shows clearly in the wide and that Childs's breath does not. Repeated frame-by-frame analyses across home-video releases have produced inconsistent results: the 2008 Blu-ray was widely cited as showing visible breath on both men; the 2016 Scream Factory Blu-ray was cited as showing breath on MacReady but not Childs; the 2021 4K UHD has been cited both ways.
"The breath argument has been run for forty years and is not going to settle. The film grain, the lighting, and the home-video grade all interact with whether breath is visible on either man. I have looked at every available release of the film and I do not believe the breath alone resolves the question." — Glenn Erickson, DVD Savant (2017)
Carpenter himself has called the breath argument a non-issue.
"The breath thing is not the answer. The cold and the lighting and the film stock all interact. I did not light the scene to make breath visible on one of them and not the other. The breath argument is the audience trying to find a key the film does not have." — John Carpenter, The Hollywood Reporter (2022)
The earring argument
A second, more recent piece of textual analysis has focused on Childs's earring, visible in some scenes earlier in the film. The argument runs: in the closing two-shot Childs is missing the earring he had earlier, which would suggest his clothing has been replaced by the Thing's reconstitution of him. Counterarguments note that the earring is not visible in many earlier scenes either and that the closing-shot lighting and angle make it impossible to determine. The earring argument has been less-cited than the breath argument and is generally treated as inconclusive.
The 2002 video game
A 2002 video-game tie-in (The Thing, Black Label Games / Computer Artworks for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox) is set after the events of the 1982 film and treats Childs in the closing two-shot as having been the Thing. The video game is not canonical with the 1982 film (it was a licensed work that Carpenter did not direct or supervise) and is generally treated as one possible answer among the four positions, not as a definitive resolution.
Why the question is not the question
The film's structural argument is that verification is the problem. Resolving the closing two-shot would falsify the structural argument. The film's strength is its refusal to give the audience the verification the rest of the film has been arguing the camp does not have.
"The Thing's ending is open because the film's argument is that closure is the falsification of the threat. If you knew which of them was the Thing, the film would be a horror-genre closure. Because you do not know, the film is the structural argument it has been all along. That is why the ending is right." — Mark Kermode, The Guardian (2002)