Review: Thoroughbreds

Thoroughbreds (2018) - Cory Finley

       When you're growing up, in high school in particular, every problem seems monumental. Your parents are awful and no understands you. Now, the moment you get old enough to not be a total idiot, we know this isn't true. Our problems in high school were adorable little pre-life problems, and sometimes movies suffer from trying to make these little non-issues so dramatic. It goes doubly for movies about rich people, whose "problems" usually make me so irritated I wanna flip the laserdisc player over. For teenagers in movies, and in real life, every small struggle or issue is basically life or death. Well Thoroughbreds, the new thriller/dark comedy from writer/director Corey Finley takes that idea quite literally. What if instead of crashing our mom's Tesla, getting a wrist tattoo, or crying for hours while browsing memes on Instagram when something bad happened, we hired drug dealers and plotted murder? It's certainly not a bad idea, just one that requires a deft hand to keep it from being too twee. Luckily, Thoroughbreds is a fun, exciting movie that mostly justifies its character's choices to be insipid, pecunious teenagers.

       Amanda (Olivia Cooke) has problems. Her doctor can't quite pinpoint it: bipolar, borderline schizoid tendencies, depression, whatever whatever. Basically, she feels no emotions at all, the closest she can muster being hunger. After a disturbing incident a few years ago involving a beloved family pet, Amanda was taken out of school and placed in a psychiatric ward, which is when her friendship to Lilly (and well, everybody else) ended. After a few estranged years, Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy) and Amanda are hanging out again, at the behest of Amanda's mother for SAT tutoring, though it's clearly not just that. When Amanda discovers how much Lilly hates her rich asshole stepfather (lion hunter, bull runner, samurai sword haver, and monthly juice cleanser Paul Sparks), she suggests they just kill him. Lily is horrified at first, but, well. Obviously some things change otherwise there wouldn't be a movie.

       This movie mostly works. It has a very distinct style and the two main actresses have some fantastic moments together. The movie is able to navigate its way through black comedy and creeping tension quickly and adequately. Considering this is the first directorial effort from Cory Finley, it's surprising how well the movie is shot and its dialogue comically solid. There are only a few times that the film veers off too far into ham-fisted. Discordant tribal drums blare out to build suspense, and it only works sometimes. At times it feels forced, along with the long montages of incredible opulence. This is a movie about extremely wealthy people, but the movie never takes a stance on how we're supposed to feel about them. Are they assholes because they're rich, or are they rich because they're assholes? The movie feels like it's missing some key elements of commentary, instead happy to just show us how rich this entire asshole family is, but not what that any of it actually means as far as their characters are concerned.

        The movie's clear standout is Olivia Cooke as the emotionless Amanda. It's through her complete lack of awareness the audience finds its surrogate, which is a neat trick. The girl who can't feel anything is the one that we most relate to, and cook definitely earns it with her performance. Her lack of empathy is actually endearing because you can tell she's trying. "It's not that I'm bad. It's that I just have to work a little harder to be good." That's definitely something everyone on this big dumb Earth can relate to, and she sells it. The only problem is when you go a little deeper and you realize, if the emotionless sociopath is our most relatable character, then whaaat does that possibly say about the other characters? Namely Lily.

      It's certainly not actress Anya Taylor-Joy's fault, because I think she's doing what' written on the page sufficiently, and like I said before, the interaction between the two girls is definitely the best part of the movie, but her character just isn't there. And the problem there is simple: Irony. Without spoiling anything, because this is not a movie you want spoiled, the movie, especially in the second half, operates on such a hyper-ironic level that it becomes more and more difficult to find an emotional through-line to the story. It seems like Finley came up with the story beats before he fully figured out the characters, and it robs them of some of their agency. Their decisions seem pre-determined. The movie also seems to have difficulty deciding who its protagonist is. It wants to us relate to Amanda, but we're very clearly supposed to able to connect to Lily better. But I don't think we end being able to get too deep into either of them.

        I would be remiss to not talk about the fantastic Anton Yelchin. It's been almost two years and his death is still one big goddamn bummer to the entire movie industry (GODDAMN YOU, JEEP). He's a fantastic, emotive, and interesting actor. In Thoroughbreds he plays a small (and unfortunately, kind of inconsequential) part as a neighborhood drug dealer the two girls attempt to blackmail into killing Stepdad Mark. I get that he is a stepping stone to the girls getting more morally ambiguous, but it doesn't quite pan out. He's funny in his own completely delusional way, but like other parts of the movie, he seems like a bit of an afterthought, possibly a way to pad the already short run-time of the movie.
        The movie has a hell of an ending, but I question how it got there. The finale is sort of surprising, but at the same time sort of isn't. Overall it really does work, and it's because of the unsuspecting humanity of our horse-killing (kind-of) protagonist. The movie has some flaws, but I can't express how much I appreciate movies like this: Ambitious, original, and has a definite point of view. All of the details might not be quite there, but I very much look forward to seeing what Finley has to say next, because with some work, I think he could a really successful successful and blackly funny auteur.

Grade: 7 out of 10 Dead Beloved Family Horses