The Thinning is set on a earth suffering from overpoplulation. To control the population, every year students from 1st to 12th grade have to take an aptitude test and only the smartest will pass. If you fail, you will be killed. A girl named Laina Michaels (Peyton List) will fight her way to show that she passed even when she is told she had failed the test with help from Blake Redding (Logan Paul) "The Thinning" takes place in a future plagued by overcrowding where population control is dictated by a high-school aptitude test. When two students (Logan Paul and Peyton List) discover the test is smoke and mirrors hiding a larger conspiracy, they must fight the system to expose it and take it down. True to the current crop of teenage audience post apocolyptic films (The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, the Divergent series) the film looks at a slightly left field way of controlling humans. In a nutshell, it's a population control theory film - every year the population of all UN countries is thinned based on their aptitude. It's an almost interesting premise, and despite a mini twist at the end, The Thinning lives up to it's name - it's a little thin on the ground.<br/><br/>And unlike the aforementioned films, which did a grand job of combining established celebrities with new blood, the cast of The Thinning isn't great. Matthew Glave (the boyfriend from "The Wedding Singer") plays another unlikeable character (poorly), and that's about it.<br/><br/>At times the film made me cringe - some of the acting really is that bad especially from the school officers - and other times it just bored me. I can see what they were trying to achieve, and it was an idea worthy of an attempt - I just wish someone with real imagination, budget and contacts had been at the helm.<br/><br/>With other teen distopia flicks, I've found myself looking forward to a sequel. With The Thinning, I'm not really that interested in what happens next. And that can only be looked upon as a failure. …the narrative is so egregious it's making you feel sick just at the thought of it. That's how propaganda works. It stimulates fight or flight emotions which is then used to manipulate the immature mind.<br/><br/>If this movie was intended for adults, I would say fine. But the primary cast are all Disney Channel employed young actors, and one of the main characters has a seven-year-old sister who is also important to the story.<br/><br/>This is worse than the Hunger Games because just like The Purge it takes place in America. This is a story way too terrifying to tell to our youth because it's too close to home, and they do not realize how impossible this is. Kids are already forced to accept ideologies about socialism, climate change and overpopulation, so a narrative about killing off five percent of your children every year isn't that much farther of a stretch for them.<br/><br/>This is predictive programming. That is, it grooms its viewers to accept what it sees as an inevitability. Most adults would look at this and dismiss it, but children are much more sensitive and likely to internalize this utter garbage which is what makes it dangerous and completely inappropriate.
Casday replied
295 weeks ago