Question about the monster's abilities in "The Thing"

I watched "The Thing" last night for the first time after seeing a lot of posts on here about it, regarding it as one of the best horror movies. It was actually quite good, doesn't look as old as it actually is, and the effects were pretty amazing even in this time. My question is about the monster, and I can't exactly wrap my head around it even after looking around online. The Thing 'assimilates' its prey and then imitates them. So what does this mean exactly. Does the monster eat the person, and then turn into the person? Or does it infect the person, and their body stays the same but just inherits the thing's tentacles and stuff? The first human killed, Bennings, had weird tentacle arms and hands before he was burned by the crew, and immediately before the human was shown with tentacles wrapped around him, so which is it? Does the Thing literally grow into a new human copy, or simply control and infect the human host?

Submitted April 04, 2017 at 08:42PM by Ursotender http://ift.tt/2oElvbb