Review of Thinner (1996) by Thequietgamer — 10 Jul 2017

It's an interesting premise and a decent story. Although this is one of those Stephen King adaptions where one has to wonder if it would have been better off just staying as a book. King has a lot of interesting works out there that would do well as a movie, but Thinner? There's a lot of just watching the guy grow increasingly wary of his situation before actually doing anything. Yet, despite being an odd choice I feel director and writer Tom Holland did a pretty good job with the material.

Thinner is basically a body-horror, revenge movie. One where just about every character is out to get someone else. The real problem with the movie is that no one is in the right. No one deserves to get their revenge, because most of the people they want to get revenge on haven't actually done anything that bad. At least not intentionally. It's just one simple mistake that spirals wildly out of control because everybody wants to get all justice happy. I mean, yeah it's a crappy situation and certain characters did try to weasel their way out of it, but the punishments don't fit the crimes. Especially since everyone sort of brought all of this on themselves.

This could have been forgivable had the movie tried to use it to teach viewers something. Like forgiveness, taking responsibility for our actions, and how taking justice into our own hands only makes things worse. However it doesn't do that. We watch the main character go through all of the movie's events and literally learn nothing. If anything, he ends up a worse person. Missed opportunity.

Now, if you've actually read through all of this it probably sounds like I hated the movie. That isn't quite the case. In fact I think it's an okay watch. Some of that Stephen King magic is still present. We get some interesting scenarios like a dream sequence involving a gypsy carnival. Also, like I said the premise is interesting. If you like Stephen King then you should like the movie.