"Thoroughbreds" - Film Review
Thoroughbreds was written as a play, but its acquisition by a film company provided playwright Cory Finley with the opportunity to write his first screenplay. Finley was signed on as director, and the first day of filming was also the first day he ever set foot on a movie set. To debut with a self-assured movie like Thoroughbreds is no easy feat. A small cast, limited sets, and a phenomenal score all add to the magic of this film.
Billed as a crossover between Gossip Girl and Heathers, Thoroughbreds is about teenage Amanda (Olivia Cooke) returning to her upper-crust suburban Connecticut home after serving time for animal cruelty. A mystery for most of the film, all that’s known about Amanda’s animal cruelty is that it involved her horse. Her mother, Karen (Kaili Vernoff), hires Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy) to tutor Amanda and keep her company. Karen worries that Amanda has lost all of her friends due to the animal cruelty incident, so the tutoring is really an excuse to provide her with companionship. It’s a flimsy lie that Amanda easily sees through, especially because she and Lily were friends when they were younger. Even so, they start to enjoy spending time together and the pretense of tutoring fades away.
Amanda eventually meets Lily’s stepfather, Mark (Paul Sparks), who Lily comes to hate. She can’t stand the sound of his rowing machine or the way he talks to Cynthia (Francie Swift), Lily’s mother. One night, out of the blue, Amanda asks Lily if she has ever considered killing Mark. What begins as a harmless question with no real intent starts to take shape when Amanda and Lily blackmail Tim (the late, great Anton Yelchin), the drug dealer who hangs around high school parties, into going through with the murder plans.
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Deftly juggling aspects of film noir and contemporary thrillers, Thoroughbreds is a breath of fresh air. Whether it comes from Finley’s career as a playwright or the impeccable casting choices, the movie has a sleek self-assuredness that is quite lovely. There’s a scene late in the film that is a single take focused on Amanda, the camera slowly zooming in as she sleeps on a couch in Lily’s house. Lily is in the frame at the beginning, exits for most of the scene, then returns for the last moments of the take. Unfortunately, that description cannot convey the abject, nerve-wracking nature of the scene. The anticipation of what will happen when Lily returns and what it will mean for the two of them is palpable, even though all of the terror is occurring offscreen. The result is a true testament to the faith Finley has in his script, his vision and his actors.
Thoroughbreds is a dark delight. Deeply comedic moments are intermixed with trepidation and tied together with standout performances by Cooke and Taylor-Joy. This is a movie that will most likely go underappreciated for years, but will eventually be elevated to a cult classic. It’s a burden that movies vastly ahead of their time must bear.
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