Zanobard Reviews

Ennio Morricone’s score for The Thing has one of the most perfectly apt main themes in horror film history with “Humanity (Part II)”, with the sheer bleakness and unnerving nature of both it and its surrounding cues only hammering this tone home; listening to them, you can practically hear the whistling winds and settling snows of the Arctic from John Carpenter’s iconic titular film.

An acute sense of unease is the tonal centrepiece of Ennio Morricone’s score for The Thing; the sheer unsettlingness of it, particularly in the main theme track used extensively throughout the film – which we’ll get onto a little later – is its most standout aspect, and is the thing (haha) that makes it truly iconic too. The score though begins with “Humanity (Part I)”, and immediately as this opening track begins to play an eerie sense of unease settles in. High-pitched, wary strings are centre stage, with a repeating and equally ominous three-note phrase fading in and out at various intervals. This phrase will go on to be a big part of the main theme track later on, but for now it echoes moodily amongst the aforementioned strings and later brass, rising and falling in what is a particularly hair-raising piece of horror ambience overall – and an excellently foreboding opener for The Thing to boot. You can practically hear the isolation and the dread, not to mention the endlessly swirling snows of the iconic 1982 film here, and that level of atmospheric stage setting in just seven minutes is no small feat by maestro Morricone. Moody orchestral textures are then central in the shorter “Shape”, with intensity and volume rising continually until some rather eerie organ notes and strings fade the track to a quiet close.

The minute-long “Contamination” gets quite unsettling quite quickly as rapid string plucks reach an intense crescendo, with “Beastiality” then simmering back down in mood for some almost upbeat processive strings in its opening minute. These then build with increasing emphasis with brass and percussion joining the cause until a rather loud finishing crescendo is reached. The subsequent “Solitude” then opens much quieter and more serenely, though it doesn’t take long for volumes to rise as some particularly unsettling strings and similarly tonal brass phrases set a rather malevolent mood. A continually plinking piece of percussion then opens “Eternity”, simmering in atmosphere for the first few minutes of this six minute setpiece before additional instrumentation starts to rise in the background with an organ intriguingly in centre stage, and the entire ensemble then reaches a rather bizarre-sounding and indeed otherworldly crescendo a short while later. It’s interesting I have to say, listening to this track in particular; much of the score for various reasons actually goes unused in the actual film, and this is one such piece where I must say I can see why, as I’m struggling to feel where it would have fit – wackily eerie as it is.

The start of “Wait” feels almost pseudo-Western in orchestral style, which only adds to its unnervingness as the instruments set a tense, almost anticipatory tone with those now frequently utilised high-pitched strings in centre stage. It has to be said, they’re so creepy – it’s one aspect of this album that’s retained in the film itself, and it helps so much in seeding this bleak, isolated mood that’s essentially the cold, frozen heart of the movie honestly. Finally though, the score’s big moment arrives with Standout Cue “Humanity (Part II)”; this is the main theme of The Thing, and indeed the track used most prominently in the film itself. It begins with a single percussive thud, and then two; these now two percussive thumps then repeat, and slowly – evolve. I love this track. I don’t know if it is intentional by Morricone – I assume so – but the fact that the music starts as two repeating thumps – a human heartbeat – and then shifts and changes as if becoming more and more alien but while still retaining those core two repeating thuds as its percussive undercurrent, imitating the human heartbeat, is such a cool choice stylistically given the nature of the film’s ever-assimilating extraterrestrial antagonist.

As the track goes on the percussion is then joined by eerie organ notes reprising the three-note motif from the first “Humanity” cue that then build to a tremendous finish, and all-in; it’s easy to hear why this track is so iconic. It so perfectly captures both the unabating bleakness of the movie and the utterly alien nature of the titular creature in one seven minute cue, and one just cannot give it enough praise for that. If director John Carpenter was going to pick one track for his film, you can see why it was this one. The album itself though has two further cues in store for us before its end; the first is “Sterilization”, which opens with the same organ notes but now accompanied by some rather dramatic flutters of synth that go on to build quite a frenetic atmosphere for the five minute runtime overall. Final piece “Despair” then doubles down on the horror in the first minute or so with intensely high-pitched strings and waves of malevolent brass, before the full orchestra builds emphatically to crescendo and the ensemble then slowly settles back down to bring this impeccably eerie album to a calming close.

Overall, you can’t deny just how utterly unnerving the atmosphere of Ennio Morricone’s score for The Thing is, and therefore how perfectly it – well, parts of it anyway – shapes the iconic 1982 film. The high-pitched strings featured centrally in many cues are an excellent showcase of this, with the continual sense of unease that they evoke in opening track “Humanity (Part I)” for example expertly cementing the film’s core themes of bleakness and isolation. Sadly much of the rest of the album goes unused in the final cut of the movie, with the aforementioned track as well as main theme “Humanity (Part II)” being the biggest examples of actual film appearances (multiple in fact in the case of the latter, as it’s used rather aptly in repeating form all across it). All-in though I’m torn on the album’s mostly lack of use; one the one hand, having seen the film multiple times I feel its atmosphere and the way the music is used is very sufficient, enough to make it one of the best horror films I’ve ever seen in fact, but on the other it’s still a shame that maestro Morricone’s excellent music is mostly left on the editing floor here. That said, director John Carpenter does use the best of the album – namely the “Humanity” cues – quite effectively in the film, and there’s also something to be said that the other tracks do feel a little less focused thematically than the aforementioned ones, being mainly wandering – though very aptly dread-inducing – tonal soundscapes, so you can see why the “Humanity” ones were given centre stage.

The thudding alien heartbeats of the latter track in particular – just horrible hair-raising perfection.

Score: 8.5/10

Standout Cues: Humanity (Part I), Humanity (Part II)

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