The story begins with a nightmare. Cinematographer Joe Wesley’s camera spins on a queasy vertical axis as everyone at a high energy spin class is cycling away enthusiastically, save for one woman who flails and flags, and who obviously, despite the fixity of the exercise bikes, is being left behind. When the instructor Demetria (Annie Ilonzeh) asks the assembled fitness fans, “how y’all feelin’?”, the voice of the struggling woman is heard replying, “hungry… I’m so hungry…” as she leaps violently upon Demetria and eats her like a zombie.
This has been a literal nightmare, as the woman, Penny (Michelle Macedo), wakes in bed, gets up and immediately, ritualistically weighs herself. Penny is determined to attain her ideal body mass by Christmas (which is fast approaching), and so her fridge is full of dietary drinks, her calendar calibrated with pound gains and losses, and her mirror covered in motivational post-it notes. Yet she is also driven by a deep, deep hunger – a craving for food which she can never quite keep at bay. When her mother (Norma Maldonado) tries to encourage her to eat a healthier, more balanced diet, Penelope replies: “You know how I am, all or nothing”. Really, though, she is both of these things at once, caught in a cycle of extreme abstinence and compulsive binging which makes her her own worst enemy. Her other recurring nightmare tellingly involves being trapped in a well whose walls are made of donuts, and having to eat her way out to the top.
It seems obvious that sweet Penny is “going off the rails” and “having a meltdown”, not least because these are the messages literally emblazoned across the sweaters she chooses to wear. Her dietary fixations are clearly symptoms of an eating disorder, and her self-loathing verges on body dysmorphia. Penny spends her working hours retouching photos and footage for advertising campaigns, and her leisure time scrutinising her own image and striving to erase all those parts of herself that she regards as unwelcome flaws. She even jokes with her neighbour Josh (Gavin Stenhouse) that she has a “fat twin Penelope”, as though she were divided not just between who she is and who she aspires to be, but between herself and another, like Jekyll and Hyde.
Recognising Penny’s predicament, Mariah (Mary Beth Barone) – the model on the latest advertising campaign, whom Penny’s boss Neils (Brian Huskey) regards as a “fucking ugly Russian lizard”, but whom Penny herself considers “perfect” – offers Penny three of her experimental “Thinestra” pills, which are not yet on the public market, though she warns Penny that it is “very strong medicine” and “not everyone has stomach for it”. Like the heroine of any fairytale, Penny will ignore the warning and take a pill on three (the magic number) successive nights, thus miraculously losing weight, but also unleashing her dark, appetitive double (played by Macedo’s twin Melissa). Now everyone around her, from complete strangers to love interest Josh, to Neils and Penny’s best friend Chaela (Shannon Dang), to her own mother, is potentially on the menu for the other Penny’s insatiable hunger, as Penny sets out on an impossibly accelerated journey towards her physical ideal, eating her way through anyone who crosses her path.
Set in LA, the world capital of fanciful dreams and unattainable images, Thinestra is a psychodrama all dressed up as oozing, oleaginous body horror. Co-writing with Avra Fox-Lerner, Hertz pitches his satire somewhere between Samantha Aldana’s Shapeless (2021), Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance (2024) and Emilie Blichfeldt’s The Ugly Stepsister (2025), as he shows a woman fighting and failing to meet the impossible standards of the beauty myth, and along the way assimilating everyone around her. Still, despite the seriousness of the subject matter, the tone remains light, as Penny’s breakdown is orchestrated, like one of her ads, to bright neon colours and merry Christmas songs.
“I’m sorry”, Penny says, “I’m just perpetually hangry!”. Whether Thinestra causes Penny’s transformation into her all-consuming id, or is just a part of the cruel market that feeds her monstrous insecurity, this young woman has crossed the line into enacting her nightmarish fantasies, and no faddish cure can bring her back.
The world premiere of Thinestra takes place during the 33rd edition of Raindance.
