Thoroughbreds

Dir: Cory Finley 1hr 33mins (15) Chilly psychological thriller

A “black-hearted neo-noir” from first-time director Cory Finley, Thoroughbreds “plays a little like Hitchcock’s Rope for mean girls”, said Tom Shone in The Sunday Times. Most of it takes place in the vast mansion in Connecticut where Lily (Anya TaylorJoy) lives with her narcissistic mother and obnoxious stepfather, whom she loathes. Then she makes a new friend, the sociopathic Amanda (Olivia Cooke), who suggests they find a way to murder the ghastly stepdad. They enlist the aid of a seedy local drug dealer, but inevitably things don’t go according to plan. Finley’s chilling portrait of this moneyed elite is brilliantly observed, down to the details of how they wear their clothes and hair, said Joshua Rothkopf in Time Out. As a result, you can’t help but “laugh your way through the shivers”. This “macabre comedy” could “easily have seemed grotesque, silly and self-indulgent”, said Geoffrey Macnab in The Independent. “Instead, thanks to the perfectly judged performances of its two young female leads, and writer-director Finley’s gift for acerbic irony, it is both unsettling and frequently very funny.”