Review of Thoroughbreds (2018) by Christopher R — 09 Mar 2018

THOROUGHBREDS is the directorial debut from Cory Finley, which stars Olivia Cooke and Anya Taylor-Joy. Mis-marketed as the latest HEATHERS knockoff for teens, this film was dropped into an arthouse theater in my neighborhood instead of the multiplexes.

Why a distributor would ever think a typical teenager would be found in an arthouse cinema is uncertain. The story consists of two teenage friends, Lily (Taylor-Joy) and Amanda (Cooke), both damaged and disturbed in their own way.

Amanda is emotionally unable to feel anything which allows her to have a pending animal cruelty charge looming over her head. Lily despises her stepfather and the stakes are raised once her mother informs her she is being shipped off to a boarding school for troubled girls and her stepfather adds that after a year, her tuition will be her own responsibility.

After the local drug dealer bails after being hired as a hitman, the two friends decide to take matters into their own hands. While the film does display talent with witty dialogue (unsurprisingly, the director is also playwright), the slow burn narrative suffers tremendously because there is no one to care about.

The protagonists Lily and Amanda are played in such a deadpan, cynical manner that it is difficult to empathically connect with either one of them and ultimately gives implausibility to the entire script.

Equally distasteful is the antagonist stepfather Mark (Paul Sparks), whose terse arrogance creates a cold distance between the audience and character. With the unoriginal story as THOROUGHBREDS presents (although forgiving since very few ideas are completely original these days), along with the large portion of screen time emphasizing the internal conflict of pulling off such a heinous act with dry and deadpan enthusiasm, THOROUGHBREDS does not have enough juice to recommend.