I dropped acid and watched this movie (while hungover too, generally bad ideas) and came up with a thesis for an essay that the monster was the creeping influence of neoliberalism. This was in the same trip where I was reading Graeber's Debt. I peaked around the time Graeber was talking about free market principles in the 9th Century Islamic empire in the Indian Ocean.
Looking back, not a super strong case was made. Not nothing, and Carpenter's Halloween and They Live speak a lot about American modernity. Maybe I'll give it a shot
I try to always say, “I don’t know what it is, but it’s weird and pissed off,” when people ask me to identify something.
I actually saw this episode before I saw The Thing, and when I saw The Thing I kept thinking "oh Star Trek ripped this off lol"