Thoroughbreds (2018) [Blu-ray]
Drama | Thriller

Tagline: Good Breeding Gone Bad

Childhood friends Lily and Amanda reconnect in suburban 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 has developed a sharp wit and her own particular attitude, but all in the process of becoming a social outcast. Though they initially seem completely at odds, the pair bond over Lily's contempt for her oppressive stepfather, Mark, and as their friendship grows, they begin to bring out one another's most destructive tendencies. Their ambitions lead them to hire a local hustler, Tim, and take matters into their own hands to set their lives straight.

Storyline: Two upper-class teenage girls in suburban Connecticut rekindle their unlikely friendship after years of growing apart. Together, they hatch a plan to solve both of their problems-no matter what the cost.

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman, May 29, 2018 Just based off the title, one might be forgiven for imagining Thoroughbreds to be some party-hard movie about a couple of girls who were born-and-bred for boozing or maybe even bumping uglies. But that's not what this is. At all. Writer/Director Cory Finley's film, originally conceived for the stage but ultimately reworked for the screen, tells the story of a pair of disparate and, in their own ways, desperate teenage girls who hatch a plan to pull off a murder. The story is incredibly basic but at its center is a much more complex and demanding, but never convoluted, introspective into the girls' hearts, minds, and souls, exploring the best and worst of who they are and what drives them towards the unspeakable. It's a movie that's not thoroughly or traditionally entertaining but that is thoroughly well crafted and dramatically engaging and certainly one of the year's best little movies.

Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy) appears to be a straight-and-narrow girl living in the lap of luxury with her mother (Francie Swift) and her self-obsessed and mean-streaked stepfather Mark (Paul Sparks). Lilly, however, despite her manicured and calm exterior, is a wildly emotional person prone to severe inner restlessness and turmoil. She has been expelled from school for plagiarism and is on her way out to another school tailored to girls with behavioral problems. Lily's one-time best friend, Amanda (Olivia Cooke), is much Lily's opposite: an emotionless vessel who has recently killed her maimed horse with a butcher knife. As the two girls rekindle their relationship -- much more awkward, certainly, than it was in their childhoods -- the perceptive Amanda notes Lily's severe disdain for Mark, which runs deep and is embodied in the gnawing sound of his aerobic rowing exercises that eat away at Lily's soul with every stroke. The two gradually hatch a plan to kill Mark and hire a small-time drug dealer with big aspirations named Tim (Anton Yelchin) to do the deed.

With Thoroughbreds, Cory Finley has crafted a very deliberate, engagingly slow-paced, careful and considered dark character film. Every shot tells its own story and each scene builds its own narrative, both of which funnel into the larger sequences -- chapters, as the movie labels them -- that altogether build an engagingly unique and tonally dark film watching experience. Even as the essential story is incredibly simple, the characters are as complex as they come, without coming across as overburdened by overly engineered depth. The film finds the proper balance between achieving forward story momentum and slow-burn character building and exploration, the latter of which dominates the film, the former of which is largely settled by the end of the first act. It's methodical, the actors brilliantly capture the unspoken depth as much as the essential physical actions that propel the story, and Finley frames it with exquisite structural draw, keeping it artfully and tellingly simple. He shoots his subjects in a manner that allows the actors to absolutely melt into character, where he simply uses the camera to draw on their innate abilities to shape the characters with very telling, but very natural, cadences that play beautifully to the lens.

The film maintains its tight focus on character, plot, and structure by removing distractions in its first act, introducing and following only the three main characters -- Lily, Amanda, and Mark -- who are, of course, the narrative propellants in the movie. With no artificial distractions or secondary characters interfering, there's a generous amount of both stated and implied, internal and external, character build in a compact allotment of time. The film opens up in its second act, introducing, primarily, Lily's seemingly dense, oblivious, and self-focused mother whose only concern is living it up on her new husband's dime, and Tim, the drug pusher who aspires to one day possess essentially everything Mark has. While act two is a little louder and ventures a bit further beyond Mark's mansion, the film regains that tight focus in act three, offering several dramatic surprises yet, no matter the direction the story takes, maintaining that same engrossing production and pace status quo that has gripped the viewer from the opening moments and holds on through to the end.

Thoroughbreds is one of the best little films of the year. It's a welcome departure from large-budget extravagance, a movie that builds its cinema capital on intimate characterization and subtle ebbs and flows that ultimately lead to a powerful wave of character intensity. It's sharply written, very well acted, smartly photographed, and crisply edited, yielding a wonderful, must-see picture. Universal's Blu-ray offers good video and audio alongside a couple of deleted scenes and two featurettes. Recommended.

[CSW] -3.8- First, don't read anything that talks about the plot (especially reviews - IMDb's description gives less away) or it will ruin the building storyline for you. Second this movie is based on a play, dialogue is the most important thing. To know what people are doing see a movie; what people are saying see a play; what people are thinking read a book. This is a psychological slow-paced cerebral film. This movie is clever. A psychological, artistic piece. The girls are beautiful and the acting is exceptional. The visuals are colorful and stunning. But if you don't get caught up in the dialogue you might find it boring. Try to figure out the nuances in what each character is saying and that won't happen. The film does take a "film noir" type of movie and make it dazzlingly beautiful.
As a side note this dark psychological thriller is peppered with some dark comedy and melancholy moments seeing Anton Yelchin (Tim the drug dealer) on screen for the final time. Anton lived in Los Angeles, California, until his death on the evening of June 19, 2016, outside his LA home, when his parked Jeep Grand Cherokee rolled backward on his steep driveway, pinning him against a brick pillar and security fence causing blunt traumatic asphyxia.
[V4.0-A4.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box


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