Thoroughbreds
While watching Cory Finley’s “Thoroughbreds,” I thought that the film was like if Paul Thomas Anderson had directed “Heathers.” As I was looking into reviews after the fact, though, another name was brought up in Yorgos Lanthimos, the director of “Dogtooth” and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer.” That is actually a better comparison, and makes sense as “Sacred Deer” felt too sterile and distant emotionally for me, and “Thoroughbreds” is the same way. It’s a shame, because Olivia Cooke and Anya Taylor-Joy came to play in this film. I just don’t feel like there’s anything there for them.
The film begins with a brief scene of Amanda (Cooke’s character) with a horse. She’s stroking it, and brings out a knife. We then cut to “Chapter One.” Amanda shows up at the house of Lily (Taylor-Joy, from “The Witch”) and her family for tutoring on a standardized test. Immediately, we sense something off with, honestly, both girls, but Amanda can tell that Lily is full of shit when Amanda answers her questions about why she agreed to tutor her for Amanda’s mother. Both girls have known each other for years, but they’ve grown apart as they’ve gone through school and individual traumas. Now, they have come back into each other’s lives, and find each other living emotional lies, although Amanda is more up front with hers than Lily is. Seeing the way Lily’s stepfather, Mark (Paul Sparks), treats Lily, it’s no wonder the two (through Lily’s instigation) begin discussing killing him.
It didn’t occur to me until recently that the film costars the late Anton Yelchin as Tim, a drug dealer and convicted sex offender whom Lily and Amanda go to for help in their plan to kill Mark. The fact that he died in July 2016 tells you how long “Thoroughbreds” has been on the shelf, and he is the life that this film needs without becoming truly cut off from human behavior. He brings an energy and intelligence to Tim that is fun to watch, and when the time for action comes, Finley wrings much tension from an uncertainty of what happened the night Mark was supposed to die by Mark being alive, and Tim’s gun- which the girls had taken from him- no longer where they put it. Yelchin may be a sign of life this film- which feels like a dry, dark comedy about privileged children rebelling against their upbringing, only it isn’t funny- but, as I mentioned earlier, Cooke and Taylor-Joy bring what they can to tricky material. They play it exactly as Finley has written it, and while you can’t really take your eyes off of either of them, they can’t really elevate it much further than just an interesting study in tone and mood. There’s compelling material here, but Finley just doesn’t really give it a chance to leap off the screen the way it probably should save for the moments Yelchin is on-screen with Cooke and Taylor-Joy- in those rare instances, it feels like it comes to life.
