In the deep recesses of my computer, apparently I once wrote a review of Things. I have no memory of doing this. But it couldn't have appeared more miraculously, saving me from rewatching it yet again, in hopes of trying to write something about it (which I have been putting off for weeks, because after about twenty viewings, the film becomes almost physically painful to get through). What I have below, kind of gets it as exactly right as I ever could. Maybe I will never have to watch it again. Which means, I probably should watch it again tonight. Just to be sure it's done with me.
A couple of guys hang out in a kitchen. They drink beer and put their jackets in the freezer. Sometimes they wander into other rooms and look at lamps. Sometimes they turn the lamps on. There are also monsters somewhere in this house, seemingly made out of paper mache but also presumably dangerous. But these two only occasionally seem to worry about this. They seem to have more than enough to distract themselves with in the kitchen. Beers to drink. Television to watch. Spiders to put in peoples sandwiches. If this were any other movie, we might expect them to be curious, investigate a little, act as if they are in peril and try and do something about it. As it turns out though, it often seems that the makers of this low budget anti-delight have maybe only been given permission to shoot their film in one neglected corner of their parents house, and that the only horror to be found in the adjoining rooms is an irritated mother just biding her time until that days filming is over.
Things is a film that seems to catatonically seal its characters off either at the kitchen table or the living room sofa in a house of horrors. Like a low budget version of The Exterminating Angel, no matter what terrors they seem to suspect to be happening in others parts of their home, their explorations don’t get very far before they return to the comfort of that couch, or the solace of this fridge filled with beer. They can never leave, and with a new brewsky to suck on, they will quickly forget that maybe they should just leave the house all together, or maybe call the cops, even though they assume it’s much too late at night to do so.
There is a paralyzing inertness to Things. Even when one of the two guests at this house suddenly dies, even this hardly changes the dreary, dull minute to minute reality of this film. The death will happen off screen, during one of many news flashes that interrupt the film periodically to inform the audience of such things as local car accidents, Cher’s husband being seen with Tracy Lords and other things we don’t need to know about. When we return one of the men is now gone, apparently having exploded, or sucked into a mousehole, or some other misfortune that caused his bodily fluids to be lightly drizzled on his friends blue sweatshirt. Of course, we’ll probably never know, because immediately arriving on scene to restore balance to the evening is the owner of the home, who has seemingly been in one of the other rooms all this time, and now with a drinking partner restored to the evening, oblivious kitchen sitting can now continue.
Things, it seems, could remain in neutral for all eternity. Like a group of people soggy and lethargic with a night of binge drinking, it is in no hurry to go anywhere, at least not until the grisly climax. With the directors family now seemingly having gone to sleep, they can now branch out from the kitchen table and lay claim to the others rooms in the house by defiling the carpets with green goop and syrupy blood in their battle against the Things. It will be a war waged that seems so hurried and muddled (mother might wake up after all and shut everything down) that the cast can’t even keep a straight face as they wander back in forth whacking things with hammers and chainsaws and electric drills. One could hardly blame them considering how drunk and half asleep everyone on camera seems. It will almost all be worth the rage of mother tomorrow morning, when she wonders what happened to here home, and if her son is ever going to get himself a real job.