★★★★★
4 March 2018
A movie review of THOROUGHBREDS. |
“It’s only weird if you make it weird,” Amanda (Olivia Cooke)
Shot with graceful, cold symmetry, in correlation with the leading duo, THOROUGHBREDS has announced a new writing-directing talent in Cory Finley. Working in harmony with the visuals, Olivia Cooke and Anya Taylor-Joy are inspired. Their characters are formidable. Two young people you never want to be in the same room as, let alone cross. Like THE SOPRANOS’s Tony Soprano, Amanda and Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy) chew up and spit out anyone in their path. Oh, and they are still only teenagers in high school.
Shot with graceful, cold symmetry, in correlation with the leading duo, THOROUGHBREDS has announced a new writing-directing talent in Cory Finley. Working in harmony with the visuals, Olivia Cooke and Anya Taylor-Joy are inspired. Their characters are formidable. Two young people you never want to be in the same room as, let alone cross. Like THE SOPRANOS’s Tony Soprano, Amanda and Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy) chew up and spit out anyone in their path. Oh, and they are still only teenagers in high school.
From Dostoyevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’ to THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, creatives and audiences have been fascinated by those who you can murder without remorse. One is not talking about drone striking individuals from two continents away (though surely you must wonder at the moral compass of those ordering and pushing the button? For that, see GOOD KILL); one is talking about being next to the victim. One hopes that conscienceless psychopaths are only a tiny fraction of the population. THOROUGHBREDS is about two in the same community who have found themselves in the same sphere.
Amanda and Lily are private school denizens who are personae non gratae. We see the former at night with a knife by a horse in a barn. She is now awaiting trial for animal cruelty. In the meantime, she is due to be tutored by Lily. THOROUGHBREDS continually asks who is the dominant force as their camaraderie grows. Once friends when young, they drifted. Is Lily a social climber ditching the kinda creepy Amanda? “I don’t have any feelings. Ever,” the latter observes. Watch as she fake cries, and thousand yard stares everyone into submission. She is perceptive. Amanda appears to have no weaknesses. Lily finds them.
You may think Amanda is the ultimate teenage sociopath, but wait until you see Lily flex her muscles. How dark is each character? Like BABY DRIVER, everyone is worse than you initially think. Is Mark (Paul Sparks) a deviant? An evil stepdad? We witness him yell at Lily’s mother (Francie Swift). She is a verbal punching bag. Afraid of her shadow. For good reason we eventually realise. Mark is sending Lily to a disciplinarian boarding school. The mother is not shielding. We think we know who the real victim(s) are. Alarm bells should have been hammering in audience minds, but the film is so dextrous.
THOROUGHBREDS makes us think we are getting the whole picture, and then pulls the rug from under the viewer. The ending is ice cold.
Using these Google Adsense links help us keep Filmaluation free for all film and arts lovers.