Saturday, March 17, 2018

Thoroughbreds - Review

Thoroughbreds

Anya Taylor-Joy (formerly of “Split”) and Olivia Cooke (formerly of “Me, Earl and the Dying Girl”) play childhood friends Lily (Taylor) and Amanda (Cooke) who reconnect in suburban WASPY Connecticut after years of growing apart. Lily has turned into a polished, upper-class teenager, with a fancy boarding school on her transcript and a coveted internship on her resume. Amanda is still in her middle working class neighborhood who has now developed a sharp wit with her own set of particular and peculiar attitudes as well becoming a social outcast in circles at school.

Though they initially seem completely different from the adolescent days, the pair begin to bond through Lily's contempt for her oppressive and oddly weird stepfather Mark. As the two young ladies get reacquainted and their friendship grows, they begin to bring out one another's most destructive tendencies. Together they start to share the same ambitions that lead them to hire a local hustler named “Tim” (the late Anton Yelchin formerly of Star Trek Reboot aka Chekov) to take matters into their own hands to set their lives straight.

REVIEW: An equal party psychological thriller and satirically wink – wink humorous look at the human nature of two modern millennials devising something that is both brilliantly devious and brilliantly absurd that you don’t know as the viewer if you should be laughing at the events on the screen or squirming. I did both.

With a screenplay that is nasty, sarcastic, witty and depraved the film at its core is about a pair of ice cold deceptive teenage sociopaths set in a dark noir setting that makes fun of itself while being just enough horrifying to keep you from ever guessing how this low budget film will end.

Stylistically, “Thoroughbreds” is not for everyone, but it has real value for the adventurous film goer like me who wants to be challenged with something fresh and imaginative even if the principle characters in the film come across as two highbrow psycho bat sh*t crazy babes.

3.25 Stars

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