Rating: 4.5/5 stars
“Thoroughbreds” is directed and written by Corey Finley and stars Olivia Cooke (“Me, Earl and the Dying Girl”) and Anya Taylor-Joy (“Split”) as Amanda and Lily, two polar opposite girls who develop a very strong, very strange and very disturbing friendship. Amanda is a sociopath who has no feelings or emotions about anything, whereas Lily is extremely emotional and feels everything, almost to a fault. When Amanda points out that Lily despises her stepfather, Mark (Paul Sparks, “The Greatest Showman”), the two of them come up with a plan to murder him. Their plan suckers in Tim (Anton Yelchin, “Trollhunters”), a high school dropout and wannabe drug dealer.
Most films we get now are starting to feel very much the same in nature, but this is a film that just blows the doors off any conventions and manages to be one of the most different things out there. Finley does an immaculate job placing this entire movie on the borderline between black comedy and horror, and never once does it go too far in either direction. While the marketing of this movie does make it seem a tad bit more conventional than what the actual movie is, it still does a brilliant job of sucking people in so the experience they end up getting is one unlike any other film experience this year.
Performances here are easily some of the best of the year. Cooke and Taylor-Joy easily have some of the best chemistry ever put to film. But what makes their relationship great is how dependent the two of them are on each other, even if they don’t realize it at first. Amanda, despite being a sociopath who does not feel anything even remotely resembling an emotion, still needs this bond with her friend because it’s the only connection she’s ever had that, while not necessarily giving her an emotional connection, makes her feel like a human being. Lily, on the other hand, who by all dictionary definitions is perfectly normal, is completely run by emotion. It gets her to the point where it begins to cloud her judgement and make her seem even crazier than Amanda. It’s a brilliant dichotomy, and the bouncing back and forth between the two of them is done so differently here that it feels so fresh and original.
While Cooke and Taylor-Joy are the stars here and are responsible for all the dark moments, this is still a dark comedy. A lot of that levity comes from Yelchin’s role. After getting over the initial tug on the heartstrings at knowing that he’s dead and that this is one of the last times this very talented kid who is gone far too soon will be seen on screen, almost all the gut-busting laughs come from this guy trying to be tough and getting in way over his head. He just has no idea about the type of people he’s getting involved with. What the film does brilliantly with him, however, is that his character of Tim is actually portrayed as someone who, despite talking a big game, has some common sense and knows to call it quits when the chips are stacked against him. Yelchin’s performance helps make this character feel so naturally relatable, as his involvement in the film is the equivalent of Lil’ Rel Howery’s in “Get Out,” as the personification of the audience within the film.
The story itself is very straightforward and doesn’t necessarily have a whole lot of complexity to it. But that’s not the focus here, it is these characters. With a lot of modern films, the biggest problem that seems to keep popping up is being able to juggle character vs. story and how one always seems to suffer when the focus is on the other. Here, however, the juggle is perfectly even-keeled because what keeps up the investment in the story, with all its dark twists and turns, is the combination of these characters and the brilliant writing, cinematography and score that keeps the audience locked in until the credits. Fair warning, the ending of the film is easily one of the most disturbing things ever put to screen.
Image from Focus Features via YouTube.com
