THINESTRA (2025)

Streaming on Tubi from Breaking Glass Pictures!
Directed by Nathan Hertz.
Written by Avra Fox-Lerner.
Check out the
trailer here! !

Twin sisters Melissa and Michelle Macedo play Penelope, a young graphic designer working for a photographer and desperately trying to lose weight. After strictly following a diet and slaving away at the gym, Penelope always finds herself suffering from the temptation to eat food that is bad for her. After a photoshoot with a particularly svelte model, Penelope asks the model what it is like to be slim. Taking pity on her, the model gives Penelope an experimental weight loss pill. Without any other option, Penelope takes the pills and sees immediate results. But it also makes Penelope’s hunger grow to monstrous proportions and as Penelope grows thinner, the slim self she always wanted to be will do anything to keep her hunger at bay and destroy the portly Penelope for good.

THINESTRA is pretty much the same movie that SACCHARINE is. It has an overweight protagonist who has been struggling with her weight since childhood who is willing to go to some gross out lengths to lose the weight. The only difference is that THINESTRA does everything just a little bit better.

The focus is more on Penelope’s character than her relationship and gender status. She is surely just as interested in finding a partner in THINESTRA, it’s just that this does not overwhelm the rest of the storyline as SACCHARINE does. Getting thin is the main goal and you can say that goes for SACCHARINE too, but THINESTRA is solely motivated to lose those pounds more than anything else. And for someone who has always had a few pounds in need of shedding, I found myself more connected with Penelope’s plight than the lead in SACCHARINE.

But the real reason why THINESTRA is so effective and nauseatingly good is that it depicts the loss of fat in such a disgustingly fascinating way. You’ve heard of get thin quick drugs touting that the pounds will literally burn away. Well, in THINESTRA, yellow chunks of fat literally are squeezed from the pores like a ripe whitehead. It is so viscerally effective to see Penelope literally squeeze the fat globules from her body. It’s disgusting. It just might make you gag. But this is the most effective use of body horror I’ve seen since Cronenberg’s heyday.

In the end, I simply preferred the lesser known and under-hyped THINESTRA to the over-hyped SACCHARINE. Both are effective body horrors about basically the same premise and have their own unique strengths. Both are worth seeking out. One just communicated their message and the lead’s plight more effectively for me than the other.