r/johncarpenter

Hey everyone,

As a massive fan of the Master of Horror, I’ve been closely following John Carpenter’s recent moves. His return with the anthology series Suburban Screams back in October 2023 was a huge talking point, and it got me thinking about his current place in the modern horror landscape.

I decided to sit down and write a breakdown/analysis of his return to the genre, his focus on composing music, and those tantalizing hints he dropped about a potential sequel to The Thing (discussing MacReady and Childs' survival).

While Suburban Screams split the audience down the middle with its true-crime/documentary approach, seeing Carpenter direct again (even remotely from his couch for "Phone Stalker") was something special. However, it leaves us with the ultimate question: does he still have one final, big-screen cinematic masterpiece left in him?

Personally, I would love to see a proper follow-up to The Thing if Kurt Russell is on board, but part of me feels like the ambiguous ending of the 1982 classic is just too perfect to touch.

What do you guys think? Is Suburban Screams a sign that he’s still eager to tell scary stories, or should he just focus on his incredible Lost Themes albums?

POPKulturowy Kociołek.

I’m kinda an obsessed John Carpenter fan so yeah, this shit made me so excited. 78 days until his new album drops. Go pre save it on Spotify if you got the time. Fingers crossed this shit hits! Need more good music for my night walks. Lol LFg!!!

Take care everybody

I just noticed this now:

After Blair is locked up in the shed, Mac, Childs, Fuchs, Copper and Gary discuss the blood test. It imeadiatly cuts to the blood having been sabotaged.

How much time passed between that conversation and the blood being sabotaged?

If Copper was going to imeadiatly "start working on it", the Thing's window to sabotage the blood would be small.

Would the rest of the crew know that they were planning this test? If the blood's saboteur overheard them talking about the test inside, their window would be even smaller.

Its more likely somone present at the conversation sabtaged the blood.

Fuchs, Copper and Gary were all human, while the film ends with it being ambiguous as to if Mac and Childs are human or thing.

I had always assumed that if Childs was a thing, he was assimilated after the others left to check on Blair at the end of the film. And i assumed that if Mac was a thing, he two would've been assimilated at a later stage (like after recording the message). If Childs or Mac sabotaged the blood, they would've had to have been assimilated much earlier.

On the successful blood test later, if Mac or Childs were already assimilated, this suggests either the blood test is imperfect or things can decide whether it works or not (so Palmer intentionally allowed his blood to react like that). If its the former, we might assume that if a person is 'partially assimilated' (like some have suggested for Norris) the test would've failed. This would be strange since Mac or Childs had already been assimilated at this point for a few days. If its the latter, its just as weird since it leads to the question of why would Palmer reveal himself?

Another thing to consider:

Only one person isn't seen drawing blood, that being Mac. Mac already had his beaker of blood ready. But if the blood in that beaker wasn't his, where would he have gotten it? The blood from earlier of course! Mac could've faked his blood test by a sleight of hand using the blood he had sabtoaged earlier. In that case, Palmer could've (intentionally or not) revealed himself to give Mac the total trust of the crew. Notice how Mac seemingly waits for Windows to get attacked before he burns Palmer.