Film Review: Thoroughbreds (2018)

And we're off . . .

Thoroughbreds (15)

Starring: Olivia Cooke, Anya Taylor-Joy, Anton Yelchin

Director: Cory Finley

The Plot: After several years apart, two upper-class former friends are reunited: blunt and to-the-point Amanda (Cooke) suffers from an emotional disorder where she feels nothing, having undergone years of therapy after harming a horse, while the submissive Lily (Taylor-Joy) is desperately unhappy living under the oppressive rule of her wealthy step-father. With Amanda's encouragement, Lily embraces her feelings of hatred and hatches a plan to get rid of her step-father by hiring a local drug dealer (Yelchin) to murder him, but the girls soon discover that they may need to get their own hands dirty . . .

Check out the trailer for the film below:

Review: This darkly funny, psychological thriller has taken some time to make it to cinema screens here in the UK, and it's also sadly the final film that Anton Yelchin completed before his tragic death in 2016 at the age of 27. It's been worth the wait though, as this is a fantastic, performance-driven tale of how emotion (or the lack thereof) can drive people to dark places.

The film was originally intended to be a play, and this is very much apparent: the film is driven by the performance of the two leads, with most of the scenes only featuring them and featuring a lot of dialogue, and very little use of score or incidental music (although where these do feature, they're effective). It has a short run-time of 92 minutes that's split into four "chapters", and the majority of it takes place in one location: the sprawling, lavish mansion that's home to Lily. For the type of story this is, which focuses on these two characters, on their reunion and developing friendship and the effect they have on the mental state of each other, it works. The rest of the cast are minimal by design, with only Lily's mother and step-father getting any significant screen time apart from Yelchin's character Tim, and this is deliberate.

This isn't a horror by any means, but it is a very dark film in tone and there are some quite clear echoes of The Shining going on in the framing of this film and its centralised location of Lily's home. The house itself is a monument to decadence - a vast, lavish complex that's eerily silent, devoid of life except for the scurrying servants and serving more as some kind of trophy cabinet for the trappings of wealth. I loved the camerawork in this film - its use of framing, close-ups and focus pulls is very clever and draws your attention to and from Amanda and Lily at just the right moments. There's rarely a shot where one or the other of them isn't present, and for good reason.

As it leans so heavily on them, the film wouldn't work without strong performances for Amanda and Lily. Thankfully, both Olivia Cooke and Anya Taylor-Joy are fantastic here and have been given two very interesting characters to explore. I was talking about Cooke only last week in my review of Ready Player One where she's great as Art3mis - I've been a fan of her since seeing her brilliant performance in 2015's Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. In Thoroughbreds as Amanda, she has the challenging prospect of playing a character who, by her own admission, doesn't feel any emotion, and she absolutely nails it. She manages to portray Amanda as flat and emotionless but without being monotonous, and the moments where she "switches on" brief moments of emotion (such as the scene where she explains "The technique" to Lily for faking crying) are exceptional. A lot of the film's dark humour comes from Amanda, who says what she thinks without any filter, and she's also the more disturbing of the two girls - her lack of emotion makes her unable to see why certain actions would make people uncomfortable or are just plain wrong, and the scene in which she recounts how and why she harmed the horse is chilling.

Anya Taylor-Joy is another actress I'm a fan of, having been introduced to her in 2016's Split (for which she'll return in its sort-of sequel Glass next year) and then subsequently the odd sci-fi Morgan in which her performance was the standout. Compared to Amanda, Lily undergoes a big transformation over the course of the film which Taylor-Joy nails. When the film begins she's nervous and submissive, having grown used to hiding her true feelings lest she draw the unwanted attention of her step-father Mark (who is a grade A prick). Through Amanda's influence though, Lily begins to embrace her hidden emotions and speak her mind, and her true hatred of Mark is revealed. It's Amanda who first suggests the murder ("You ever think about just killing him?") but Lily is the one who agrees to it and, later, has to be physically restrained by Amanda from doing it herself. Lily's character shifts dramatically over the course of the story and Taylor-Joy is excellent throughout.

Anton Yelchin's role is a small one, but one that he does well with. Tim is a low-level drug-dealer who has grand dreams of being a big-time player but is ultimately all show: he does his best to try and intimidate the two girls when they approach him with the offer to murder Lily's step-father, but his cowardice is soon revealed and allows for a funny scene where, after being hit over the head with a vase by Amanda, he laments about how he's going to explain his injury to his father. The performance certainly wasn't a stretch for Yelchin, but it will prove to be a sad reminder of the talented actor that's been lost. 

The dynamic between Amanda and Lily is what remains the most interesting part of the film, more so than the plot and eventual murder itself. Amanda, for all her lack of emotion, is clearly incredibly lonely and the renewal of their friendship is more important to her than she's willing or able to express until the finale. Lily is both fascinated by and wary of Amanda, in awe of her matter-of-factness and willingness to say what she thinks but also unnerved by her past actions and the emotionless way in which she views things. This shifting dynamic makes it hard to predict where the story is headed and ultimately makes it more interesting.

I thought that this was an excellent film. Olivia Cooke and Anya Taylor-Joy are both fantastic, and it's darkly funny, tense, chilling and uncomfortable in equal measure. It won't be to everyones taste (particularly the ending), but I loved it.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

An excellent psychological thriller that features some dark humour and two brilliant performances from Olivia Cooke and Anya Taylor-Joy. As writer/director Cory Finley's debut this is a promising start for him that explores the dark places that emotions can drive us to. Highly recommended.