“The Thinning” brings light to overpopulation
As a kid, I was never allowed to watch horror movies. Up until the age of 13, the only movie that might qualify as “horror” that I had watched was “Coraline” and even that kept me up at night. So, when my friends told me about “The Thinning,” I wasn’t planning on ever watching it because I thought it would be too scary for me. However, after pulling up the guts to watch it, I realized that the intense plot line makes it a perfect movie to fit the Halloween season.
The movie is set in a futuristic United States in which overpopulation has become a serious issue, with different countries enacting strategies in order to regulate the population. In “The Thinning,” the U.S. subjects every student from kindergarten to 12th grade to a test where the lowest test scorers were “taken”. The conflict begins when the main character, genius Laina Michaels, is taken after her final test and the dumb jock character, Blake Redding, manages to pass despite having guessed on every question on the aptitude test. Blake had tried to fail the test in order to be taken back to his girlfriend, who was taken the year before.
“The Thinning” is a thrilling, adventurous movie that follows Laina Michaels and Blake Redding in their effort to uncover the conspiracy behind America’s aptitude test. Laina’s driving force throughout the movie is her family, and her main goal is to get back to them with the hope that her two siblings were not taken. The movie ends with a cliffhanger after Laina and Blake uncover the government’s secrets and the plot continues in the sequel, “The Thinning 2”.
Whilst rewatching this movie recently, I noticed that I was much more scared now than I was the first time I watched it because it became apparent to me that the actual storyline is something that is not too far in the future. Overpopulation is becoming an enormous issue globally and some countries have already taken action to avoid it; China has limited families to having two children each in order to combat overpopulation. While we might not have tests to determine who has to go, the plot is a stark reminder of the direction that we are heading in.
You can watch “The Thinning” if you want to see a horror movie with your scaredy-cat friends; it’s not scary, but it’s definitely not a kids’ movie either. It is a great watch with a good balance of scary and thrill keeping you entertained but without being kept up at night.
