Thinner - Enjoyable horror yarn

The films made, based on Stephen King's books, have always been a hit and miss affair. In fact, more have tended to be 'miss' than 'hit.' However, `Thinner' is a real treat. It's nothing totally new - at least, not by today's standards - but, in some ways, it was a little ahead of its time.

Today (and ever since the US remake of `The Ring') there have been a type of horror movie where something bad/supernatural happens to the protagonist, they don't know what's going on, they research the phenomenon (normally involving the help of a convenient expert), before finally confronting the evilness in the final act. 'Thinner' is basically one of these, only made about 5-10 years before this sort of film became the norm.

It's about a fat man (Robert John Burke in brilliant prosthetics and make-up) who really goes against the old cliché that 'fat people are jolly.' He's not nice and manages to run over and kill a gypsy woman with his car and then do his best to get away with it.  However, what he can slide by in the law he falls foul of with the gypsy clan who promptly curse him, causing him some dramatic weight loss. Only he doesn't just become a bit trim.  He loses more.  And some more. Basically, if he doesn't stop the curse he'll end up looking like Posh Spice without any make-up on (and no one wants that!).

The film is generally nothing new, but it's major plus points are the special effects used for making out unwitting hero look thinner and thinner. Plus it's not for the faint-hearted. This is definitely an adult's horror film as it gets pretty dark in places.  It's not just the effects of him going from a blob to practically a skeleton that are good, but the moments of gore are certainly pretty well-done as well.

If you think you can handle a darkly disturbing King film at its best, give this one a go. I won't go too much more into the plot as there are some points that you definitely won't see coming.  I haven't read the book, so I can't say how faithful it is to that (only that the ending is apparently different if you believe all the comments on Internet message boards).

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that