I am not the only person in the world with "daddy issues" but when I consider the title The Father Thing I definitely think about unrequited fatherly love and impostors. I think about men who cant say what they want and don't say what they mean.
This thing starts with a Father and a son bonding over America's favourite past time, baseball. Then they go camping, and they get to share the experience of witnessing a beautiful meteor shower together. The stuff of dreams. Beautiful, core memories.
They return from their trip to the loving arms of a woman. Home. The woman keeps asking the father "Why didn't you tell him?" You're question is probably... tell him what? That, too, is my question.
Life goes on like normal, until it doesn't. A terrifying thing happens. And that's where this installment of Philip K Dick 's Electric Dreams enters true horror. Horror of the abject, visceral innocence and hopes of childhood that are forced to fade too quickly.
Dick's work always encounters conspiracy and intriguing plot lines, and so far The Father Thing is the most direct genuinely chilling sensation of foreboding and fear I've experienced. The pacing and the direction is excellent, and all the while, the implications of the plot line run wildly rampant as we know more than Charlie, the kid at the centre of it all.
I do kind of regret watching this one late at night, as it is the sort of thing that makes you want to lie awake contemplating and thinking about what you would do if placed in Charlie's shoes.
Where the writing becomes more powerful is the suggestion and implication that Charlie is not alone in his experience. His experience and concerns are shared by other children with which he interacts as the story unfolds.
The most unsettling part of this experience is the fact that the story is told from a position of vulnerability and youth, making the narrative far more impact than if it had dealt with the same thematic material from the perspective of adulthood.
I am trying my very best to not spoil the story, so instead, I will talk about the production values. In short, they're excellent - and little fault can be found with the technical details of cinematography or audio. The acting is passable, but not something that makes or breaks the narrative.
As this is the last one in the series, I really feel like it is appropriate to reflect on the high consistency of these adaptations from short story to completed short movie. It is clear that these all had an appropriate budget, ,and were put together by individuals who had some clear admiration for the source material.
I now continue reading the rest of Philip K Dick's work. I will likely be done in a few years.