No one would blame you for looking at Thinestra and thinking, “oh, it’s The Substance again.” Both films use an underexplained beauty product as a way to navigate how women are treated in entertainment and the pressure to always be beautiful. While The Substance goes after how women are treated in front of the camera, Thinestra gives us a glimpse behind the scenes.
It has things to say. Whether it says them clearly is a different question.
Meet Penny
Our protagonist is Penny, a young visual editor played by Michelle Macedo. Specifically, she edits the photos of paper thin models. She is surrounded by perfection all day and none of it is hers. After asking one of the models what it feels like to be perfect, she is handed a mystery pill with no explanation.
Something in the Ozempic family, as the film frames it, which is a good choice given that we are living through a cultural moment where weight loss drugs are reshaping beauty standards in real time. After struggling with her size for a bit, Penny pops the thing and waits to see what happens. You know, normal Tuesday activity.
What happens is that the weight she loses comes back. As her. Penelope, played by Michelle’s actual identical twin, Melissa Macedo, shows up as the ravenous doppelganger Penny just shed. The twin casting is not a gimmick. It is the smartest thing the film does. There is something genuinely uncanny about watching two identical people share a frame when one of them is supposed to be the literal embodiment of everything the other one is running from.
All of this plays out against a sweltering Los Angeles Christmas, which is its own kind of horror.
The Good Stuff
The first thing that comes to mind when watching Thinestra is odd. This is not a derogatory remark. Odd is always good in horror. The film features a toilet twin, a donut chamber, and a surprising amount of evil food. All of these things work beautifully for the comedy side of the film. Director Nathan Hertz has a clear vision for the film’s more absurdist moments and those moments land.
Hertz has said in press materials that “Penelope is not the villain. She is the symptom. The real antagonist is the voice in Penny’s head that tells her she is not enough.” That is a genuinely good thesis. The film knows what it is trying to do. Whether it follows through is the issue.
Where It Falls Apart
Thinestra never finds its balance between drama and comedy. Some scenes are over the top silly while others go immediately deadpan. The film is engaged in a kind of tonal whiplash that makes it difficult to stay invested in what is actually happening to Penny on an emotional level. You get pulled out right when you should be pulled in.
The special effects have the same problem. The donut dungeon looks disgusting and wonderfully delicious all at once, and it works. Some of the body horror effects do not hold up as well. It is worth noting that this is an indie production and budget has a lot to do with that. But the inconsistency is still noticeable in a way that undercuts the scarier moments.
The Bigger Picture
Thinestra comes from a long line of feminist body horror, and it genuinely tries to tackle heavy subjects. The Ozempic framing is timely in a way that The Ugly Stepsister and The Substance were not quite working with, and that specificity gives the film a sharp cultural edge when it leans into it. The problem is that it does not always lean into it. It gets distracted by its own weirdness, which is charming, but removes the atmosphere that would make the horror actually hurt.
This is not a bad film. Thinestra is funny, gross, and imaginative in ways most Hollywood films are not. It took home the VORTEX Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror Award Grand Prize on the festival circuit and screened at Sitges, Raindance, and Screamfest, among others. There is real craft here and real ambition.
But in a genre that is currently producing work as precise as The Ugly Stepsister and as unrelenting as The Substance, Thinestra does not quite make its impression. It has the right ingredients. It just needed a longer cook time.
Where to Watch
Thinestra is streaming now via Breaking Glass Pictures.