Author Riley James on the inspiration for her debut novel The Chilling.
Isolation and mistrust drive the fear in Riley James' debut novel, The Chilling, a survivalist thriller inspired by John Carpenter’s The Thing. The story follows scientist Kit Bitterfeld, who takes a winter research position in Antarctica, only to encounter a burning ship, a missing crew, and a lone survivor with no memory. As winter darkness sets in, Kit grows suspicious of her colleagues’ strange behaviour, suspecting the survivor knows more than he’s letting on. Below, Riley James shares how this classic horror film inspired the psychological tension in her novel.
My novel The Chilling was partly inspired by John Carpenter’s 1982 film The Thing.
There’s a scene in that film when the main character MacReady realises he can’t trust anyone at his Antarctic research base.
It’s an unremarkable scene really: Mac—played by Kurt Russell in his hirsute prime—is sitting in a Skidozer and simply staring at the dashboard.
Up to this point, Mac’s been aware that something’s off. At a nearby station, they’d found all the inhabitants dead alongside the burnt remains of an alien lifeform. When they bring the remains back, they soon realise ‘the thing’ is still alive and capable of absorbing and perfectly imitating other lifeforms.
But the Skidozer scene certainly cranks up the psychological tension. In that moment, Mac realises he’s stuck in the middle of nowhere, he has no outside source of help, and he can’t depend on his closest friends. The alien may—or may not—have already assimilated his entire crew.
I’m not a big fan of slimy alien tentacles, but I’m a fan of paranoid tension in cold remote locations—that provided the inspiration to write my own survivalist thriller set in Antarctica.
To me, The Thing speaks to a natural source of human anxiety. It’s the fear that other people are fundamentally strange: while they might look like us, they’re not actually like us.
In everyday scenarios—at home, at work, in sport—'this thing doesn’t want to show itself,’ Mac says. But when disaster strikes and all hope is lost, a person’s true self tends to emerge. We discover which of our co-workers turns malicious under pressure, who it is that prioritises self-preservation above everything, or who is prepared to sacrifice themselves and offer us their last scrap of food.
The terror and uncertainty of that situation lies at the heart of The Chilling.
The Chilling
by Riley James
An unputdownable thriller set in the pressure-cooker environment of an Antarctic winter.
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