This is the permissive period when you can watch Home Alone flicks without it being ‘wrong’. Of course, watching Home Alone, It’s A Wonderful Life, The Muppet Christmas Carol or White Christmas, to name a few, at any other time of the year isn’t strictly verboten. However, I’d still hold that it’s a minor crime – like jaywalking – that raises questions about the offender’s personal character. In fact, it’s worse than reckless road crossing, because at least that has an edgy, living dangerously aspect to it and is an active form of pedestrian rebellion against The Man and all his evil social mores and highway laws. You’ll see a young, naff jumper-wearing Macaulay Culkin grinning and rumbling holiday period robbers, and will feel epic hurt, longing and a sense of loss for something you never really had and only get to pretend to have in December. Just don’t do it. For the sake of your own sanity and personal wellbeing, only watch Home Alone and similarly chirpy Christmas flicks after you’ve swallowed your first Advent calendar chocolate. Reflecting on these movies, I come to realise that they’re all incredibly unhealthy from a psychological perspective. Like the season they celebrate, they’re all aspiration, hype and tinsel-tinged anticlimacticism. These films lie to us by promising a perfect season of harmony, happiness and love when the truth is poverty, ugly excess, unbearable relatives and a deep sense of winter ennui. Mark my words: your turkey will be undercooked, your presents will disappointing (or even insulting) and one of your nearest and dearest will either die, accidently fatally wound a family pet or smash the TV, ensuring that you miss the Doctor Who special. Bah humbug. Christmas is horrible. Altogether then, I say scrap seasonally-specific flicks and go for the ultimate winter movie – the chilling beast that quite deftly encapsulates all the dread and brutality of the yuletide period and powers on into perpetuity as a prime cut of classic horror cinema. That flick is The Thing, directed by John Carpenter and released to wreak glorious alien havoc in 1982. “But why is The Thing the perfect thing for December?” I hear you ask. I have good reasons, beyond the obvious fact that it’s a brilliant movie with a lot more to offer than Crimbo corn like Love Actually. Here’s why the 1982 sci-fi chiller is especially suitable for the season… It’s cold and covered in snow The Thing is set in Antarctica, which guarantees a white Christmas played out on beautifully picturesque snowscapes struck by intermittent frosty blizzards. We’ve got powder and perishing subzero temperatures. Perfect. It’s claustrophobic At Christmas, you find yourself sharing close space with a select bunch of people and because of the circumstances: the weather outside is frightful, and you have social and familial obligations – you can’t escape. Your snowed-in home is just like Outpost 31 – a confined pressure cooker of tension that brings terrible intimacy with threatening monsters that want to assimilate you and thus won’t leave you to peace and privacy. You know you don’t want to spend the rest of winter tied to that f*cking couch. ‘Tis the season for board games and silly pastime diversions to break that tension. The Thing echoes that, as all involved get into guessing games (‘Am I Human?’) and Hide and Seek’with an extra extraterrestrial twist. The festive gamer spirit is plain to see. as MacReady gives up computer chess (the computer is a “cheating bitch”, after all) and sets up some blood tests to decide who’s It. It decks the halls It’s all about mimicry Christmas is really just about impersonation, putting on a front and trying to fulfil some idealised idea pushed by adverts and pop culture. I see very little difference between a wannabe festive domestic goddess and an eager alien ululating inside a mansuit. All this pent-up stress, wrath and madness must be unloosed, and in the Thing itself I see a representation of our repressed inner monster writhing. Revelations and surprises are an essential part of the holiday, and the Thing’s outbursts provide them. It’s all about survival I hope you do survive. Just repeatedly watch The Thing, grab a flamethrower and torch all your relatives instead of the Christmas pudding. James’ previous column can be found here. Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
