“It means I just have to try a little harder to be good.” That’s Amanda in an early line in Thoroughbreds plainly explaining her mental affliction to her old friend Lily. Amanda is without feeling and emotion, though she’s not quite a “sociopath.” She blankly stares into a mirror, tilts her head and flashes a smile. She can turn on a sunny demeanor in an instant, but there’s nothing behind that façade. And yet Lily is trying just as hard to be “good.” We’re all trying.
Cory Finley’s Thoroughbreds examines the effort we exert and the demeanors we put on to appear “normal.” It takes two teen girls, one who feels nothing and one who feels all too much, and examines what a friendship can do to these individuals.
Finley tells his character study via black sense of humor, opulent production design and stirring performances. Thoroughbreds feels like a modern indie take on “Heathers” in a way that makes it destined to become a cult hit.
Amanda (Olivia Cooke) and Lily (Anya-Taylor Joy) are two wealthy, aristocratic teens in Connecticut who rekindle their unlikely friendship after a long break. Rumors have been circulating about Amanda that she butchered her family’s thoroughbred horse, and Lily has morphed into the perfectly fake socialite that Amanda can see right through. But when Lily lets down her guard, she reveals a dark desire to murder her monstrous stepfather Mark (Paul Sparks). They blackmail a young drug dealer (the late Anton Yelchin) to do the hit job, all to prevent Lily from being shipped off to boarding school.
That Thoroughbreds actually finds humor in this premise is just part of its allure. Amanda and Lily are intellectual equals capable of making Yelchin’s tough guy routine into puddles or to make Sparks’s uncaring alpha-male have a little less power. Much of the film is watching Amanda and Lily talk or watch old movies. They let us into their world and their past through their verbal wit and their ability to set emotions aside and get at what’s true.
Finley’s film bristles with the morbidly funny, deadpan humor that has come to define indie comedy, but Thoroughbreds isn’t bouncing off the walls with quirky energy. It’s moody, cold and spacious much like the film’s massive Connecticut mansions. The camera crawls up the stairs like something out of “The Shining.” It frames the two girls amid a life-size outdoor chess board as though they were figures in some surreal Dali painting. And Finley amplifies the tension through the grating, low rumbling of Mark’s rowing machine.
But best of all, you feel as though Amanda and Lily’s demeanors come from a place of examining their characters’ emotions rather than just trying to get an uncomfortable rise out of the audience. There’s a brilliant scene where the two are watching an Old Hollywood classic. Amanda observes that the actress can cry on command because she must’ve studied “the technique.” She then conjures up her own tears on cue, articulating how simple it is when manipulating your breathing just so. It’s funny, shocking and surprising, but you feel as though Amanda has really put in work to appear this calculated and artificial. And it’s only a matter of time before Lily is an expert herself.
Fake crying aside, Cooke and Taylor-Joy together give remarkable performances with difficult characters, and they’re so good you can imagine how they could’ve flip-flopped parts and been just as compelling. Cooke has the task of being a blank slate, but not be robotic. She never flinches or hesitates in her performance, and she’s perfectly natural. Taylor-Joy on the other hand has some of the biggest eyes in Hollywood. Her stare goes from a deer in the headlights to absolutely ruthless in a short period of time. She’s got range that even this movie hasn’t fully realized.
It’s tough to imagine what exactly defines a cult film in 2018. Being weird, smart, shocking or stylish alone doesn’t cover it. Thoroughbreds is all those things, but its polish and performances show that it isn’t content just to be a cult film. It’s trying just a little harder to be good.
4 stars