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Stephen King's Thinner (1996)

Director: Tom Holland

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From Time Out Film Guide

Billy Halleck (Burke, unrecognisable as the Hal Hartley actor) is a well connected attorney in Fairview, Maine, whose body is ballooning as his arrogance grows. His attention distracted while driving (by a congratulatory blow-job from his wife), Billy knocks down an ageing gypsy woman. His cronies cover up the crime, but gypsy elder Tadzu Lempke (Constantine) utters a curse which sets Greg Cannom's make-up effects department into reverse, with Halleck wasting away into a cadaverous skeleton. Even as the psychological tension is wound up - as the ghost-cheeked attorney suffers tormented nightmares, fantasises infidelities, and falls deeper into the compromising grip of mobster Ginelli (Mantegna) - second league horror director Holland seems unable to invest the film with anything resembling conviction. Having reached the crossroads signposted 'Spoof' and 'Delirious Nightmare', he sits down and goes nowhere. Light fun can be had either from watching ethnic minorities and women take their revenge (albeit, intriguingly, through the agency of supernatural spells), or from idly scrutinising Burke's wobbling bodysuits. But this is basically best left as fodder for a media studies thesis entitled 'Anxiety in American Cinema in the age of PC'.

Author: WH 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide