My first thought on seeing this trailer for forthcoming YouTube Red movie, The Thinning, was that it was going to be a story about hair loss.
Introduced by “YouTube star” (it says here) Logan Paul with the words “Hair flip. What’s up?” as he tosses his not quite flowing mushroom bobbed locks to one side, I envisioned this poster child for white male privilege having to endure the horrors of thinning hair during the course of the film, surely ensuring he’d never be allowed to party at Spring Break again.
But no, instead the Young Adult movie is something to do with a whole lot of equally white teens with full heads of hair having to take basic intelligence tests (well, there’s your problem right there, of course). Preying on the fear of exams this seems to entail some shady government plot to cull people with imaginary names (Logan Paul, Peyton List, Calum Worthy… ha ha, Calum Worthy…) who are ejected from their shopping mall utopia to go live with people with bad skin care routines, no Vine account and club cards at Wal-Mart. So basically, it’s a horror movie for people who frequent Urban Outfitters.
Or maybe it’s about killing off the really dumb teens, I couldn’t remember the plot thirty seconds after finishing the trailer, just Logan Paul’s hair.
I’m still trying to work out whether this is one of the most ghastly things I’ll never watch, or if it’s actually a work of genius – a film completely populated by fully-realised CGI simulacrums who have been named by committee (…ha ha, Calum Worthy).
Either way, The Thinning isn’t about hair loss. Which seems like something of a missed opportunity to me. But then I’m not Logan Paul.
“Hair flip!”