10 Stephen King Film Remakes Needed To Erase The Terrible Originals

4. Thinner

Thinner is another one of those movies that's so often imitated and even parodied that you forget where the original came from in the first place. Though, in this instance, it's not exactly the worst thing in the world. It falls into that familiar trap of no one on set clearly taking it seriously, even if star Robert John Burke seems like he's having a great time. Can't fault the guy for that. Burke plays lawyer Billy Halleck, who, in a moment of passion, runs over a young gypsy woman. The woman's father, not content with Halleck getting off scott free, places a curse on the morbidly obese lawyer, dooming him to lose forty pounds a week until he eventually whittles away. The story on which it's based is meant to play off of our image-obsessed society, whether physical or materialistic. It's not the subtlest or, frankly, even the smartest allegory in King's lore (here, under his nom de plume Richard Bachman), but it's an important point all the same and it deserves better than the fate bestowed upon it by the incessant mugging that passes as acting. Not to mention the hokey special effects. Or the fact that you couldn't really tell if it was a horror or a comedy. And don't you even dare mention that fat suit. It's admireable that director Tom Holland wanted to highlight the main character's mental downward spiral by opting for full-on insanity spiked with black humor, but the tactic is well out of his wheelhouse and it shows in every half-baked frame of this dreck. One man who is totally comfortable with eccentric remakes, however, is Werner Herzog. Why not pair him back up with Nic Cage in a bit of a Bad Lieutenant reunion? Hey, if nothing else, it'd be a hell of a lot more interesting than the original.