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Streamin’ King: ‘Thinner’ Takes Body Horror To The Extreme
King’s 1984 novel originally published under his Richard Bachman pseudonym.
THINNER
THE GIST: Husband/dad/lawyer distracted during automotive sexytime runs down elderly Romani leader’s slightly less elderly daughter; titular single-word curse cast upon White Man From Town. Effects as advertised, unstoppable terminal weight loss at rapid speed, leading to quest for cure and/or sweeping vengeance before, as he puts it, “being erased” completely.
PEDIGREE: Directed/co-written by The Langoliers as a TV miniseries. Script co-penned by Michael McDowell, who has writing credits on Beetlejuice, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Tales from the Darkside. Stars Robert John Burke (Gossip Girl, BlacKkKlansman), three-time Emmy nominee Joe Mantegna (Criminal Minds, The Godfather: Part III), Lucinda Jenney (Rain Man, The Mothman Prophecies), Bethany Joy Lenz (One Tree Hill), and Michael Constantine (My Big Fat Greek Wedding). Cinematography by Kees Van Oostrum (The Fosters), score by Daniel Licht (Dexter).
WORTH WATCHING FOR CONSTANT READERS? Every so often a sticky King elevator pitch snags you and you have to ride that elevator to the last floor, whether it takes weeks or decades to actually find out what’s down there.Under the Dome—some of these you hear the premise and have to see it through. If Thinner is one for you, by all means go ahead and…actually, still maybe check yourself before you cinematically wreck yourself. It’s so far from being the scariest, most memorable, most human, or most well-made SK adaptation that you’re better off engaging with almost anything else. Go see what the hell’s going on with The Mangler or Pet Sematary, it’d have a good bargaining chip. But, perhaps unavoidably, it hits like a depressed wet fart.
WORTH WATCHING FOR KING NEWBIES/AGNOSTICS? Ever seen a non-porn flick where the inciting incident is a bee-jay in a moving car? Not even close to the first question that needs asking; I’m just wondering. Thinner’s middling community is horrendously presented (“they bring disease, crime, and prostitution!”) and builds to a ghoulish mobster Racist Rambo–ing their camp with a machine gun, causing explosions, death, and, let’s be honest, literally generational trauma.
7 STEPHEN KING TIES, REFERENCES, AND MISCELLANY:
- The book—boldly, for an author who didn’t want his secret found out—features two actual name checks where Billy’s problem is said to resemble a Stephen King story.
- The oppositionally tender contemporary 2018 novella is how long can this guy with an unheard-of illness keep himself tethered to Earth till he’s utterly irrelevant to gravity and floats away, and what bonds will he foster in those final months?
- Holland audiobook by the way).
- Joe Mantegna is one of an elite (butKathy Bates, David Cronenberg, Whoopi Goldberg, Rob Lowe, and Gary Sinise.
- Other repeat Kingverse journeyfolk: John Horton did The Green Mile and Pet Sematary.
- Stevie cameos as one “Dr. Bangor,” the story’s second fellow geographically-named medical professional after Dr. Mike Houston. (“Agent Stoner” also kills me.)
- While the 1987 adaptation of the Bachman book The Running Man was solely credited to the pen name, for this one—the only other—they opted to dress it up and send it to the dance as Stephen King’s Thinner. The rights to both were sold before Bachman’s identity was known.
CRITICAL CONSENSUS: Tomatometer swinging, saying it was “one of the more pedestrian translations of the shockmeister’s books, and is headed for the video remainders pile after a brief, lackluster theatrical run,” the Globe and Mail wrapped, “Like too many Stephen King movies, Thinner is all (emaciated) concept and no follow-through.”
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT FOR THINNER (1984): Amid its publication, per King, Richard Bachman “died suddenly…when the vampirish side” was “killed by the sunlight of disclosure.” Misery was intended to be Big Bach’s big book. Here’s what our guy looked like the only time he emerged from SK’s imagination and onto a book jacket:
Timeline-wise, Thinner was preceded in ’83 by and It in ’86.
Zach Dionne writes and records Stephen King things regularly at SKzd on Patreon.