Film Reviews & Movie Analysis

You know what they say, if you don’t like someone – kill them.

No? Not one of your daily mantras? Well don’t blame yourself, not all of us are thoroughbreds.

Having killed her thoroughbred horse, Amanda (Olivia Cooke) is awaiting trial for animal cruelty. In the meantime her mother has paid her old friend Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy) to hang out with her under the pretense of tutoring.

Lily isn’t apposed to the company. As large and pristine as her house is, her home life is less than idyllic; with an emotionally absentee mother and a psychologically abusive step-father.

Though starting as the tutor, Lily ends up being schooled. Unfeeling, persistent and annoyingly logical – Amanda is what you could call a sociopath. Having faked her emotions for so long, she is running on empty and Lily has a front row seat to the edge of the abyss, and she can’t look away – especially when Amanda suggests she kill her step-father.

The idea for this movie is one that has been done a hundred and one times before in varying ways – and yet I wasn’t mad at the way it was spun in this movie; Two teenage girls plotting to kill one man in the best way possible.

Perhaps it was the opulent setting it took place in, or the fact it was a pair of teenagers with (mostly) no prior murderous experience.

The soundtrack was the second thing I enjoyed. It had that off center, indistinct voices, echoey, foreboding, nails on chalkboard feel that instantly transported me to Get Out.

Similar sounds were used in that movie, but in Thoroughbreds it was used less as a warning from your ancestors and more to create an off kilter atmosphere – and it did its job.

Finally I was really digging the actresses – Olivia Cooke (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Ready Player One) and Anya Taylor-Joy (Split, The Miniaturist). They were both pretty damn believable, even Olivia Cooke whose character Amanda’s personality was a little too on the nose.

It’s a quiet movie with not a lot going on within and around to distract you from the two characters at the focal point, and they did well to keep my attention – which at times did feel like it was waning. Kudos.

Riding off my like of the actresses I’m going to swoop right into my confusion and mainly annoyance over the personalities of their characters.

From my understanding, Thoroughbreds is about two girls – one of which (though strategically unconfirmed) is a sociopath (Amanda), whilst the other is a goody goody (Lily).

The lines of their differing persona’s was drawn pretty early on in the movie – but, almost as soon as we think it’s clear cut, Lily’s Connecticut country club breeding does a 180 and she takes on a lot of Amanda’s personality; blank faced, calculating, cold.

We now have two characters who are essentially the same – without the preface of why.

The movie switches to be about two girls – one of which is a sociopath, whilst the other is a psychopath. Internet research hasn’t led me to believe this was supposed to happen, or was in fact the secret underlying theme of the movie, (which would have been amazing), so how or why this ended up happening is anyone’s guess.

Honestly, I’m not mad at the plot – I’m not… but, what keeps nagging at me is that Lily’s stepfather Mark (Paul Sparks) wasn’t that bad. Yes he was a prick but did a supposedly sane teenage girl have the grounds to plot his murder?

Heck if I plotted the murder of every douche bag that was in my space at home, at work or on the train… I’d just be a serial killer. 

I happen to be really interested in the character profiles of sociopaths and psychopaths (don’t ask) so it wasn’t hard for me to notice certain pitfalls the movie had in that respect.

Overall the concept of Thoroughbreds, coined as ‘American Psycho meets Heathers’, was a really good idea with a strong cast – but its downfall was the disappointment of its execution through inconsistent character types.