Thoroughbreds

Thoroughbreds

I had heard enough good things about this movie to be interested in seeing it, along with liking Anya Taylor-Joy and Anton Yelchin. But other than that I had no idea what it was going to be about.

The premise is that Olivia Cooke is a sociopath who reconnects with her childhood best friend, played by Anya Taylor-Joy. Taylor-Joy says she doesn't like her stepdad, so Cooke says she should just kill him. The rest of the movie is their attempt to do so.

Clearly this movie wanted to be Heathers meets American Psycho (I think that's even a quote on one of the posters for the movie), a violent satire revolving around teenagers, but it's not as funny or well-written as Heathers and it doesn't have the teeth of American Psycho. The problem is the filmmaker clearly had no idea what he was trying to satirize or even what tone he wanted. The movie has no point and no direction at all. They're plotting to kill the stepdad, but he's just kind of a jerk. Not a monster. Not worth killing and going to jail over. So is it about spoiled rich kids? Kind of, but not really. It's focused mainly on the relationship between these two girls.

Cooke is a sociopath who's very honest and open about everything, whereas Taylor-Joy's character has really murky motivation and it's almost impossible to ever tell what her character wants. She seems to want Cooke to think she's capable of being emotionless too, but she also thinks Cooke is weird and doesn't want to be anything like her. Then sometimes she's mad at Cooke for not being as into the murder plot as she is, then other times she's terrified of the murder plot, and so on and so on. There needs to be a clear point of view for her character otherwise I have no idea how to feel about her. It also gives Taylor-Joy, who's proven herself to be extremely talented in The Witch and Split, absolutely nothing to do as an actress.

One of the most basic rules of filmmaking is "show don't tell." This movie is almost 100% tell. It's just these two girls talking, sometimes about murder, sometimes about horses, but always about nothing really. There are ways to make their conversations visual. Shaun of the Dead has a sequence where two guys are trying to figure out their best plan of action in the face of the zombie apocalypse, then we see their ideas play out as they describe them. Good Time has a moment like this as well, where a guy tells a story and we see it happen in flashback as he narrates. A visual device like this would be so helpful for this movie, where instead we just watch the girls blather on with sunglasses so you can't even tell what they're feeling (well, in the case of Cooke, nothing). And if there's symbolism I'm missing out on here (which could very well be the case), it doesn't matter because a film still needs to be interesting to watch regardless of symbolism.

None of the characters are likable, which I think is the point, but they're barely even characters in the first place. Cooke's a sociopath and Taylor-Joy's spoiled, that's about as deep as the movie gets. No one's likable in American Psycho either, but that movie actually has a clear subject of satirization (how the rich can get away with anything) and the characters are interesting in how awful they are. Here everyone's just moody and doesn't do anything. Anton Yelchin is the only interesting character in the entire film because he's the only one that has clear emotions and is essentially just a surrogate for the audience. The parents are just bland rich characters, nothing we haven't seen before. The dialogue sometimes attempts to be witty and fails at doing so. It simply does not have strong or even unique characters.

What little visuals there are aren't very interesting. The production design is boring, as is the cinematography. We never even see the girls' rooms, which could at least give us a hint of what they're like as people, since their dialogue isn't doing that for us.

It also has an epilogue ending that's completely unnecessary. It should've ended with the two of them bloody on the couch, with Taylor-Joy knowing that she can't be as cold and emotionless as Cooke, even after she's killed her stepdad. They end up disregarding what could've potentially been the one powerful moment of the film to have Taylor-Joy be "edgy" instead.

Maybe this movie just really rubbed me the wrong way, but I did not enjoy watching it. I don't really understand where the critical support is coming from, but I'm certainly not a part of it. It'll be a while before I come back to this one, if ever.