"Thoroughbreds" Movie Review

By: James Southworth
Rating: 4.5/5 Stars

I continue to think that movie going audiences are taking for granted the golden age of horror we are in right now. Just think: there was a time when most horror films were awful, uninspired, and often just remakes of already used ideas. Now I consider many horror films to be among the most original movies that are released right now. I will always appreciate a movie that can scare me and be highly enjoyable in other ways at the same time. "Thoroughbreds" had a lot of pressure on its shoulders to be good for me, as it fits more under the teen thriller genre. Thankfully, this film about two teenage girls with an awkward friendship vowing together to commit a heinous deed, is amazing. It has two excellent lead performances, as well as an understated support performance. It also shows that director and writer Cory Finley has a solid grasp on how to make an interesting fusion of horror and black comedy.

A lot of what works best in this movie is its amazing writing. I read where this movie was originally planned to be a play. After watching it, I could certainly see this movie working well on a stage setting if Finley ever decided to do so. This film has a slick hour and a half run-time. I would normally complain that time is way too short, but for a movie like this, that run-time is perfect. Thankfully, Finley doesn't waste a single minute of the run-time this film has. There's not one minute of the movie that feels purposeless. I was invested in every minute, sitting on the edge of my seat. There were constant twist and turns throughout the film. The relationship between main characters Amanda and Lily consistently shifts, so you have to be on your toes. Speaking of good writing, both of the main characters are written incredibly well, with pretty much equal screen time dedicated to both of them. Amanda's dead-pan, no nonsense personality provides an intriguing contrast to Lily's volatile, emotional character arc. Because of how different these characters are, there are many moments in the movie where they don't understand each other's sense of humor, and that creates some ingenious dark comedy. This movie is often straight up hilarious and shocking in just how darkly honest it gets. It explores the full extent of how deceiving and evil humans can be. It shows how we can fake emotion to disguise our deeper motives. It's a bleak commentary for sure, but thankfully the movie has enough comedy to not entirely drag its audience into the abyss. Still, you should be prepared to go into this movie ready for some dark thematic content. The writing throughout is just consistently sharp, with so many witty and interesting lines thrown into the mix. The film even does a pretty cool thing of having horses being a motif throughout the film. The payoff for what the horses represent is actually quite interesting. The movie doesn't spoon feed you what they represent, but it's still easy to figure out through the implications. Those are signs of some absolutely expert writing.

There is a horror element of this film for sure as well, and I think that like with the black comedy, Finley nails it. The horror aspects of this movie are not quite as consistent but when they do appear, I enjoyed them immensely. There is some incredible suspense drawn out in several scenes due to excellently executed long shots. There is one in particular near the end of the film that is one long shot of a Amanda sleeping while a murder is going on upstairs. The interesting part of this is that the movie never shows the murder happening. Instead it just consistently closes up on Amanda sleeping. All we can hear is the sounds upstairs. The movie leaves it up to your imagination to picture how brutal the murder is, which is much more frightening to me. This stays consistent with the movie's frank, violent dialogue that more than makes up for the lack of violent imagery. Lily does end up coming downstairs, covered in blood and crying uncontrollably. It's such a haunting scene which gives you exactly everything you need to know without being overbearing. The suspense in this movie works just because Finley knows how to toe the line between subtle violence and over the top gore. This movie is dark enough to make the suspenseful moments feel all the more visceral and real. This isn't what I would call a movie that will give you cold chills, but it will still make you tense up and be constantly on edge. That works just as well for me, and is in my opinion, an underrated way of presenting horror on screen.

Bringing this film all together is all of the memorable performances by a game cast. There is not one person in this cast who I would call a weak element, as both the leads and supports have their moments to shine. The leads are definitely what will draw a lot of people to this movie, and I don't think many will be disappointed with what they get. Olivia Cooke as Amanda continues to prove herself as an exciting actress who continues to hone her abilities. I haven't seen her play a role quite like Amanda before. She completely disappears into the role, giving us a performances that interestingly traipses between her being deadpan as well as naive. Cooke keeps her character constantly engaging, especially in how cynically honest Amanda is about humanity as a whole. There's a definite implication throughout this movie that Amanda has a mental illness, but Cooke never makes the illness feel offensive. In fact, it's that mental illness that brought me to sympathize with her and understand where she was coming from. It's not like this illness entirely defines her character, and I don't think that was Finley's intent. It's just a part of who she is. Anya-Taylor Joy is just as good in her performance of Lily. It's been amazing to watch Joy become a consistently better actress with each film she's been in. I loved her in "The Witch" and "Split", and her performance here might actually be even better than those two films. Joy gives Lily an interesting similarity to Amanda in her cynicism towards people, though her cynicism comes from a raw and emotional place rather than Amanda's more logical reasoning. Lily has the more dynamic character arc in this film; it's really engaging to see where she goes from start to end of the film. Joy had a pretty tough transformation to nail, as she had to try to get the audience to sympathize with her even though she's undeniably not a good person. Joy does so well at drawing sympathy, though. She is an actress that needs to be watched. Cooke and Joy's chemistry throughout the film is completely spot-on. I loved the unpredictable relationship between these two characters, as it's the driving force of the plot. This movie does great at showcasing the talent of both of these young actresses. I can't go without praising the performance of Anton Yelchin as Tim. This is unfortunately his last performance we'll see from him, as he passed away back in 2016. Yelchin plays a drug dealer and dead beat, who is older than both Amanda and Lily. Even though on initial glance it seems like he should be the antagonist of the show, he's actually the character who draws the most sympathy, as he ends up trapped in something that he never wanted to be a part of. Yelchin makes Tim a very likeable character for the brief time he's in the film; his performance should not go forgotten. I also will give an honorable mention to Paul Sparks as Lily's stepfather Mark. He brings menace and a surprising amount of nuance to this character. For how all around purely despicable this guy is, Sparks still does a great job at making you want to know more about him.

The problems I have with this film are very minimal. I think the only main issue I have with it is that the ending is slightly underwhelming. I understand why the movie ended the way it did, and it's not like the conclusion was without purpose. But, I still somewhat feel that the ending should've matched up with the full-throttle pace the rest of the movie was going at. This criticism does not factor that much at all into my overall enjoyment of the film as a whole. "Thoroughbreds" is visually interesting, filled with razor-sharp writing and dark comedic wit, has suspense that is very creative, and contains two lead performances that shouldn't be missed. I liked this movie way more than I expected to, and certainly expect it to end up being high up in my favorite movies of the year. Watch this; it is definitely worth your time!