Yellowjackets Somehow Captures The Anxiety Of John Carpenter's The Thing In One Of Its Best Scenes Ever
This article contains spoilers for "Yellowjackets" season 2 episode 8.
While John Carpenter's "The Thing" wasn't a box office smash at the time of its release, it has since been reclaimed as a masterpiece, both in its groundbreaking use of practical effects and the ways Carpenter evaluated the fears of mistrust. While yes, "The Thing" is about an alien invasion and its hostile assimilation takeover of the U.S. Outpost #31 Antarctic research center, it's also an exercise in paranoia and an examination of the hierarchical breakdowns that follow life-threatening intrusions of the status quo. Things at the Outpost aren't perfect before The Thing arrives, but they're functional, and everyone understands their role on the team. But once the mutated, imitated s*** hits the fan, all bets are off and chaos ensues.
Meanwhile, "Yellowjackets" is a series about a high school girls' soccer team who are forced to resort to cannibalism to survive in the wilderness following a plane crash in the Rockies (and the way the experience continues to haunt them 25 years later), but it's also a series that explores the breakdown of a team so well connected they win the state tournament, and how being forced into a (potentially) supernatural survivalist situation causes them to all lose their damn minds.
The parallels between "The Thing" and "Yellowjackets" have been obvious from the start; between the examinations of (almost) exclusively same-gendered groups of people, the constant threat of freezing temperatures, and a lack of logical information about what is causing the weird events plaguing them all. But the most recent episode took it a step further by capturing the same anxious energy of Carpenter's magnum opus — the blood test scene.
'Now I'll show you what I already know'
The now iconic blood test scene in "The Thing" takes place after the Outpost crew has already witnessed the titular Thing effectively imitate some of their own. Realizing that the imitative blood won't "obey" the same way a human being's blood does and that it will try to survive by any means necessary, leader R.J. MacReady (Kurt Russell) decides to take samples of everyone's blood and put a hot needle to the disc containing it, thereby identifying which members of the group are already infected.
The entire scene is filled with dread, as Carpenter utilizes silence and close-ups to keep the audience entranced by the inevitability. We know that someone in the group is going to be revealed as infected, it's only a matter of who and when. As each person is tested and sighs with relief as they're shown to still be human, the anticipation only grows more and more intense. There's no way we're not going to see an alien burst from within one of our beloved characters, and Carpenter keeps the audience in agonizing wait before revealing who it is. Carpenter also manipulates the audience's expectations and weaponizes them against us, constantly lulling us all into a false sense of security before delivering a proverbial kick to the back of the knees and bowling us over with terror.
MacReady is convinced that Garry is the one infected, and therefore, so too does the audience, which makes the swerve that it's Palmer that is actually a Thing in disguise all the more effective. The squealing jump scare of his blood shooting out of the disc feels like an adrenaline injection directly to the heart; an execution of one of the greatest scares in horror history.
'The wilderness chose'
As for the surviving Yellowjackets, it's decided that in order for the whole of the group to survive, sacrifices "to the wilderness" (and to their extremely hungry bellies) must be made. Instead of testing blood, the survivors all draw cards, with the queen of hearts the mark of who will be the one to die. The girls, Javi (Luciano Leroux), and Travis (Kevin Alves) all stand in a circle as goalie Van Palmer (a coincidental name?) presents the deck from which each person draws a card before flashing the face to the group like the worst magic show you've ever seen. This simple technique, previously used to determine which chores the girls would fulfill for the day, has become an instrument of death.
Because "Yellowjackets" shows a handful of the survivors as adults, we as the audience already know that Shauna, Lottie, Van, Taissa, Misty, Natalie, and Travis will be spared from the sacrifice, which makes the reveal that Natalie has drawn the queen of hearts all the more terrifying. As Natalie slowly pulls back the card, it completely subverts our expectations that she'll be safe. It's the same horror of realizing Palmer is infected, not Garry, as if someone cut down the safety net we thought was holding Natalie close.
Before we know it, we're anxiously watching Shauna hold a blade to her throat to kill her, but since we know Natalie makes it out of the woods alive, it's a waiting game of, "How the hell is she going to get out of this?" When Travis knocks Shauna to the ground with a full-body spear, it sends Natalie running into the snowy woods, with the rest of the girls chasing after her like a clan of feral beasts.
There isn't an alien for them to fight, only the horrors of what they've become under these desperate circumstances.
'Opinion is the wilderness between knowledge and ignorance'
It's one thing to pay homage to a horror film or draw inspiration from real-life events (something "Yellowjackets" does often), but the sacrificial card drawing and the blood test scenes feel more like spiritual siblings because of their unique differences. They both share a universe where chaos doesn't play favorites, but unlike "The Thing" where there is a definitive answer to whether or not the person chosen is bad, the selection process of "Yellowjackets" is seemingly random ... or is it?
After the girls track Natalie to the frozen lake, poor Javi falls through the ice and drowns as the group looks on. They could have, at any moment, intervened and saved him from the icy water filling up his lungs and sending him to an early grave, but they don't. They've elected to believe "the wilderness chose," despite minutes before being fully on board with hacking Natalie to pieces and eating her for sustenance. The card drawing scene isn't paying homage to "The Thing," but it is highlighting the timeless brilliance of Carpenter's paragon and reviving it for an entirely new demographic of viewers. This style of building tension now exists in two worlds; one is coded masculine and adult while the other is unapologetically feminine and youthful. And what this should serve as a reminder to us all is not that "Yellowjackets" seemingly paid homage to "The Thing," but that regardless of our differences, horror comes for us all.
Man will always be the warmest place to hide, and while there's no 'I' in team, there is in 'survival.'