User Reviews

To summarize my review in advance; The Thinning is a dystopian science fiction movie that has some superb moments, but lacks the wholeness of a truly great or good movie.

To begin, The Thinning is about a dystopian society that takes place sometime after a major global warming event that left the Earth's landmass much too small for it's population. In response, the nations of the world came up with different ways to reduce the growth and size of their population. While other countries resorted to ending the lives of those of old age or limiting family size to one child, the U.S. decided to adopt a program that would only allow the smartest children to survive.

Right after this introduction is where the movie began to fall apart. The backstory for the characters was interesting, however it did not successfully help the viewer "attach" to the story of the reader. When tragedy strikes near the beginning of the movie, it's hard to feel the characters emotions. I did not feel connected with the characters, only amused by them.

There are also many minor details that fail to bring this movie up to par. You have to wonder why many students take a backpack to simply take a test on a notebook. You also wonder why the students (before and after) seem to be either lackadaisical towards the test and it's consequences or extremely anxious. They seem very emotionally inconsistent about the fact that many students will be put to death a mere hour or so after the test.

Another thing I found annoying about this movie was the poorly written script. It was quite simply... simple. There were no memorable lines and everything was quite frankly something you've heard before. I should note something important here... a movie does not need memorable lines; it needs emotionally relevant and imaginatively excellent lines. At many points, the lines were simply "decent," and at more rare parts of the movie, the lines felt like reading the words "good" or "bad" in an English essay.

Now on to some of the things I enjoyed. I enjoyed a few moments where the acting was on par with the importance of the scene. When the students had just taken the test, you can see their anxiety, relief, and unique responses to show their emotions. I also enjoyed the color pallet used in the movie. It was relevant and consistently aided to the intensity of the movie.

The last two things I enjoyed were the camera shots, which were not exceptional, rather simply nice. The editing and music also aided to the importance of the story.

I did enjoy parts of this movie, however these parts were the minority of a more-often-than-not simple and dull movie.

(NOTE: I believe in completely fair reviews. I am against giving 1 or 10 star reviews based on the current rating and my personal belief if it is too high or not. I encourage everyone to have someone check their rating against their thoughts about the movie to see if they align. That is how you should properly rate a movie. Share the word!)

Sadly, I fear that none of the editor, writer or producer etc will make it pass the thinning, as they are no doubt failing their social study and/or math class.

The movie is, at the very least, entertaining. The acting is pretty good and it attempted to paint a complete world picture of how and why things are happening. If we were to disregard certain details, the story could be believable, there are always last resort measures when we are faced with potential extinction should we choose not to act. The elements of politics, special interest, and others makes the movie mirror our own world, making it more believable.

But unfortunately, they didn't think things through and tried too hard on certain aspects, and the illusion fell apart.

The premise, or rather concept of the back story, that the world requires de-population, is a reasonable one. In fact, one of the suggested method of limiting birth have been practiced by, most famously, China for quite a long time. Unfortunately, the goal was set at an unreasonable high point of 5% annually. This will be explained at the of the review for those who care for numbers.

The setting and content of the movie also contains some paradoxes. While morally speaking, culling of the inferior is always questionable at best, there are many examples of how it can be done. Objectively speaking, if someone has to die, it "should" be those who cannot contribute to society. For example, the old and infirm like Hitler did, he's not a good guy by any stretch of the term but the choice was logical. Now, age does carry with it wisdom, so outright killing people based on age would make no sense, thou was presented as an option in the movie. However, with the contrast of killing the young generation of the future, somehow the main character's mother, someone who is I believe terminally ill and appear quite useless did not make it onto any form of culling list makes no sense. Given the premise of the "world" in the story, it felt like a rather forced sob story that is completely unrealistic in-universe.

Another character of interest is Mr.Football star. In the real worlds, colleges and universities accept people on a variety of criteria, not all academic, because society needs different types of people. While I can't say I like the character as a person, it doesn't make any sense that someone with special talents of any form, even if one that is useless in terms of "production and innovation", would be judged strictly the same way in a standardized test. That said, this could be a result of political compromise. The matter of life and death is serious business, so the allowance of special talent leads to potential of abuse so laws were made rigid in order to prevent them. Unfortunately, that didn't quite go as planned. If that is the case however, then there is the problem of what if there are genius students who excel in one or few subject matter and would have contributed greatly to society but was unfortunately culled due to failing every other subject? Standardized testing have never been and never will be a perfect form of measurement. This is more of a food for thought than anything else.

Now, the numbers I promised. 5% annually might not seem much at a glance, but the fact is, if the goal is reached, global population will be halved in 13 years, so within one generation, we will be left with only 25% of the population that we started with. Even if we assume that there is over 10 billion people at the start, reducing to 2.5 billion is rather extreme. Therefore, it is not likely for it to be a long term project and thus making the content of the story unlikely, the institution and legislation appears to be for more of a long term project. It's also extremely unfair to just one generation if culling is only done to them and only lasted for their generation. Furthermore, if we consider our current demographics, 5% of the population is more than 10th, 11th and 12th graders combined. That means even if every single student is culled, the project will grind to a halt after a mere 5 years--there will be no more students, this is taking into consideration of new enrollment and no graduates-- that is all student are culled, specifically, the sum of 1 to 18 years old(existing and future student) is not enough for 25% of the population. Similarly, "no birth" is not enough to achieve the rate of decline required, as children born within a year does not constitute 5% of the population Realistically speaking, 0.5 to 1% will be a more suitable number, this will allow roughly half of all student to graduate. Also, this would mean that it will be a long term project, thus not drastically unfair to just one or two generation.

Frankly speaking, this number problem is what prompted me to write this review. How does such a elem... OK, freshman high school level matter get missed in a movie about education, even if the education is merely a setting?

There are definitely spoilers that follow.

The requirement to suspend one's disbelief is large in this film. It also seems to be written by a strong left leaning liberal mind but that's almost a certainty in our entertainment culture in the US.

First, one must accept that the United Nations has grown to a point where it can dictate to all nations an annual 5% reduction in population as a response to Climate Change.

Then it must be accepted that Americans have willingly approved a system that executes a large number of school age children one every year for low test scores. This starts with children in the 1st grade.

As if The Purge isn't out there enough already this film includes the execution of what appears to be more than 5% of each school's class when you look at the class size and number of students executed...starting with 5 year old children.

I'm not sure if this is supposed to make us fear Climate Change or politicians more as it is implied this is very popular with the Texas government and its Governor who will run for President. Obviously this couldn't have happened in California, right?

The big twist at the end is that a huge global business is behind it all and the kids aren't actually being executed...they're being forced to work at the factory making the tablets the students use for the annual test.

It didn't show any younger or older children at that point so maybe they work for one year and then they execute them...hard to know...what is certain is that even 5% of every child taken every year would be way more tablet assemblers than required.

They take 5% every year from 1st to 12th grade...essentially only 54 of 100 survive to graduate high school.

Here is another thing that must be accepted...the parents who allow their children to go to school one day knowing 1 in 20 won't return home also do not demand their body to have a funeral..to bury.

These are just a few of the major things you must accept to begin enjoying this movie...a low budget is not responsible for a nonsensical story plot.

The acting was pretty good. All unknowns I think.

The premise is fairly up to date. The idea that the government decides who lives and dies based on some idea that there are too many people on the planet is being toyed with today.

Agenda 21 is a climate change control program that will allow government to decide where people are allowed to live in order to save the planet. That's a real program that may come into play soon.

I liked the part where the little kids are shown propaganda films on how to make the earth happy by allowing themselves to be killed off. It's pretty scary when you think of how it could happen to us today if we don't push back on the far left climate change nonsense.

I'm not sure how overpopulated the earth was in this scifi world, but today we hear people say there are too many on the planet when in reality we could fit everyone on the planet in an area the size of the state of Texas living no closer together than in NYC. Hard for many to believe, but it's a fact. We definitely have plenty of room today.

In that respect, I liked the way they touched on this political issue and made a very good adventure out of it.

Some complained of the ending, but I thought it was very good. I won't say what happens, so there's some mystery left.

All in all I was pleased with this movie. I see lots of garbage, and this was definitely not that. There were a few flaws, but they were easy to overlook.

I just want to say one thing about this movie. It was an alright movie but it was hyped up too much. This movie is set in the future where the Earth is lacking natural resources to keep the existing population so in the United States or maybe just Texas (I still don't know) students take a test. If they pass they live and if they fail they are "killed". At the end of the movie they show Logan Paul wake up on an elevator where he sees Lia Johnson alive and working on some sort of assembly line. This is the part I don't understand. If the Earth were lacking natural resources and we wanted to use less resources then why would you keep the failed students alive? They would be using the same resources as if they were "alive". After seeing this at the end are realizing that they aren't actually being killed I was really confused because then the system is pointless.

First of all, I'll say that I've definitely seen worse. This is not a full-blown silver screen flick, but at the same time it's better than most of the old SciFi Channel movie-of-the-week productions. The acting is decent and the story /mostly/ flows (more on that below). I'd file this as the equivalent of a decent TV movie or a theater-released B-movie. Casting a Rick Perry look-alike as the no-party-named Governor of Texas was a cute move (and the irony of the Governor of Texas bragging about first-in-the-nation schools was also amusing).

I could go on a rant about some of the overdone tropes in the movie (faceless mooks, corrupt government, incompetent security planning, lousy math, apparently-overly-elaborate procedures, etc.) but (1) those points have mostly been hit on in other reviews and (2) I can allow for a certain amount of that in a movie like this. It was easy enough to connect the dots on why a lot of what was going on was going on.

However, (SPOILER ALERT) what killed it for me (pardon the phrasing) was the end-of-film twist. Basically, the plot until the end is best summed up as this: In response to his girlfriend failing the test last year and getting executed, Governor's son attempts suicide-by-test-failure (while leaving a videotaped message saying he's doing this). Governor predictably attempts to intervene and manage a score swap on his son's behalf, while his son Blake rebels against this. So far, not a horrid boilerplate plot. It turns out that the swapping was basically at random (since the guy overseeing the swap only has about 2-3 minutes to carry out the swap while the scores "process") and thus a few of the highest-scoring kids in the class (Laina, the other protagonist, included) had been designated as failing. Blake and Laina break free and try to escape and/or prove what's going on. They manage to trigger a leak, prompting the Governor to override the previous list swaps (including the one saving Blake), resulting in the "correct" students getting lethal injections while the ones who actually passed were released.

Had they ended with that, perhaps with the executed students bodies being loaded into a truck for disposal or something like that, the movie would have felt like it made sense. A measure of plot-dictated incompetence aside, everyone until then had behaved in a manner I can categorize as either "rational" (the Governor trying to save Blake but folding when the situation became impossible after the leak) or "rationally irrational" (Blake's decision to intentionally fail the test). It passed Hanlon's Razor...

...and then a twist occurs! Presumably in the interest of a sequel with most of the same actors, some idiot decided that revealing to the audience that "No, they weren't really executed, they were sent to work for Foxconn...and there's Blake's not-actually-dead love interest from the first act!" was a GREAT way to end the film. Frankly, a bit of telegraphing aside, the ending is ham-fisted enough that it feels like it was slapped on at the insistence of an executive who wanted the possibility of a franchise.

That twist frankly cost this movie somewhere in the range of 1.5-2.0 stars because of the mixture of how unnecessary it was and how absurd it felt. It in no way added anything to the movie, and if anything it undermined it: Minor, often background-related, issues aside it transformed what would otherwise have been a modestly tragic ending into a farce. Without it, Blake's escapade succeeds in one respect (outing corruption in the system and saving those about to be improperly executed) but the point of his 'triumphant stand against the system' is utterly lost on the world as a whole, he's dead, and the system endures. An ending like that feels like a "well-balanced" dystopian ending with a side of biting satire, and but for the removal of that twist (and perhaps a minute of re-cutting elsewhere) we'd have that.

With all of that said, the writers do deserve a pat on the back: The movie otherwise works, but that unneeded wrinkle at the end did a number on it.

The Thinning is an interesting beast. It came out on YouTube Red, a $10/mo subscription service. The movie itself is on the shorter end, clocking on at a bit under 90 minutes, although that includes the credits and the intro sequence that lasts 15-20 minutes. This is not saying that sequence is unimportant, it's just not fully relevant to the full story and just serves as part of a back story for one of the characters.

The basic premise is that a school aptitude test helps deal with overpopulation by having the lowest scoring 5% executed. This is told through an opening text slideshow. Now this movie is pretty cliché. Government power, young people uprising, but at least it's a fresh spin. You can't help but cheer on the protagonists, although it's obvious they will win.

The execution method itself, lethal injection, is not shown until about halfway through the movie. In between the start and there, there is a good display of emotion from a first grade teacher who has to step outside to clear her head of the moral dilemma she faces. It stands out, but it's the only moment like this.

The twist ending could be seen from the beginning though. The twist is: the "executed" students are just taken to an underground facility where it appears the tablets for the tests are made. I realized from the beginning that this movie didn't have the guts to see the true death of young people through. The intro sequence includes the main character trying, and failing to save his friend from the thinning. It was then I theorized that the girl might come back. Sure, losing a friend is a good motivation, but it's tame in comparison to the "reality" of the execution of students. In other words, if it wasn't a large enough moral challenge in the beginning to prompt action, loosing one friend wouldn't do it either. So the sequence must have had more meaning that just motivation.

Another thing that tipped me off was that, throughout the film, even when the leads are being sought after by the government agents in the school, they rarely encounter the agents, and the times they do, they easily take them down. The rest of their time is spent very successfully hiding. It's too easy.

The third thing that tipped me off is how it ended right before the twist. The governor, in order to cover up the fact that he ordered the falsifying of his son's, and other's scores (because his son purposely failed), he switches up who is gets executed at the last minute, including 2 people who supposedly passed, both who had previously been jerks in the movie. Now this movie was unconventional enough at least for me to know that it wouldn't pull this "the jerks get their comeuppance" play, especially when one was African American.

Overall, the general lack of real stakes and a bit of confusion made me realize it didn't have the guts to see it through to it's morally challenging conclusion. Also it gave it an excuse for a sequel. All in all, if you have an hour to kill you can watch it, but don't expect Oscar worthy performances.