Thinner and Macbeth

A couple of months ago I watched Thinner on Netflix, which is a movie based on the book by horror author Stephen King. In a really condensed summary, a fat, upper class lawyer named Billy Halleck hits a gypsy one night with his car. Since he is friends with the court judge and police officer, he avoids any charges filed against him. As a result of the accident and the manipulated trial, the father of the dead gypsy curses Billy, the judge, and the police officer each with a unique plague. Billy is cursed with becoming thinner and thinner until he is nothing more than skin and bones, so emaciated he will die. At first Billy and his wife are happily surprised by the many pounds he is shedding, oblivious to the fact that a curse was placed on him. However this relief soon turns to fear as Billy can’t stop losing weight no matter how much food he eats and how many doctors he sees. Billy’s rapidly decreasing weight completely turns his life around and he ends up going to great lengths to remove the curse.

   It wasn’t that great of a movie and it definitely creeped me out, but now I see that it has some pretty cool connections to Macbeth. Thinner is kind of like the opposite of Macbeth. Billy’s failure to pay attention while driving and then successful attempt to play the court system shows his corrupt nature, which leads to him receiving the curse and being controlled by supernatural forces. Conversely, in Macbeth the three witches’ prophesy is what leads to Macbeth being consumed by uncontrolled determination and avarice for power.  Similarly, both leading characters, once they learn of the supernatural forces at play in their lives, stop at no ends to either fulfill or undo their "prophecies." For Billy, this means destroying his relationship with his family, wreaking havoc among the gypsy village, and ultimately intentionally killing his wife and then daughter accidentally in order to lift the curse from himself. Likewise, Macbeth becomes a tyrant in order to satisfy the prophecies that the witches told him, becoming a murderer and losing his kingdom, his wife, and eventually his own life.