Thoroughbreds
It’s never a good sign when your friend hears you’re not on good terms with your stepdad and remarks: “Ever t hink about j ust killing him?” And it’s an even worse sign in a movie, because when you’re in a movie and your friend says that, you literally can’t think about anything else.
Lily and Amanda aren’t quite friends; their relationship falls somewhere between acquaintances and conspirators. Played by Anya Taylor-Joy ( The Witch, Split) and Olivia Cooke ( Ready Player One), these Connectic ut neighbours have a vague history from back in grade school, but Amanda has gone a little peculiar — the opening scene suggests she did something nasty to a horse — which is why Lily is being paid to tutor/befriend her.
Lily has her own problems, chiefly her frosty relationship with her wealthy stepdad, played with cool, undefined menace by Paul Sparks. And she becomes fascinated when Amanda reveals that she has no feelings; she can fake- cry better than Tom Hanks, and concoct perfect lies without pausing to draw breath, yet she also accuses Lily of having no empathy. That’s the pot calling the kettle a psychopath!
Or is it? First-time writer/ director Cory Finley keeps us off balance regarding Lily’s mental state. He does it with some stellar camera work from Lyle Vincent ( The Bad Batch, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night), the smooth fluidity of the shots contrasting with the increasing unsteadiness of the characters we’re watching. He does it with the film’s sound design, which had me thinking someone just out of earshot was disassembling a music box using power tools; when the score kicks it, it sounds like an otter doing an im- pression of a monkey doing a cover of something by The Monkees. It’s some seriously weird noise.
But he also knocks the audience off- kilter through more traditional means. The screenplay is fast and tight, with nary a wasted word. And Cooke occasionally flashes a thousand- watt smile that looks to have been turned on with a switch, while Lily, the one with the supposedly normal set of feelings, become more and more vacant as the story progresses.
I haven’t even got to Anton Yelchin, who plays a drug dealer with high aspirations and low prospects. It’s another fine performance from the actor ( see Green Room, Star Trek, etc.) who died just two weeks after Thoroughbreds wrapped.
The result delivers the kind of dark- funny that will have different parts of your brain independently deciding whether or not it’s OK to laugh. It’s a comedy- slashthriller with an emphasis on the slash. At a preview screening there was scattered laughter throughout the film, but it never came from exactly the same place twice.
So you may be tickled by Amanda’s plan to “Steve Jobs my way through life,” or you may find it amusing to watch her lug pieces of a giant outdoor chess set around while calmly discussing that scene with the horse. But any way you slice it, Thoroughbreds makes for a fine movie. Ever think about just seeing it?
Thorough-breds opens across Canada on March 9.