Advertised as "American Psycho meets Heathers", Cory Finley's Thoroughbreds defies all expectations. More feminist than Heathers are far less violent than American Psycho, this film can't be boxed.
The first full-length film by Finley, Thoroughbreds focuses on the relationship between Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy, she of the large eyes) and Amanda (Olivia Cooke, an amazingly-talented up-and-comer). Childhood pals, the young ladies have grown apart in high school, mostly due to Amanda's reputation as a disturbed individual (which I'll elaborate on below). Amanda's mom pays Lily to tutor Amanda for the SATs, but really she's paying Lily to stay friends with Amanda.
In fact, it's established early on (so I don't consider it a spoiler) that Amanda is a sociopath. Not necessarily a Patrick Bateman-esque psycho, but she discusses her complete lack of emotions with Lily: Amanda neither feels joy, nor hurt. She calls herself a "skilled imitator" of human emotion. While this initially freaks Lily out, she quickly realizes that it's nice to have a friend she can be completely honest with without the fear of hurting said friend's feelings or shocking them.
So, after hearing Lily complain about Mark, Amanda casually suggests that they kill him. At first, Lily balks--mainly due to fear of getting caught. Eventually, her curiosity gets the best of her and she inquires about how they could actually pull off murder.
Amanda is already in hot water for doing something really bad...
***SPOILER ALERT***
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Although we don't see it on screen, Amanda describes killing her horse. To be fair, the horse is crippled and her mom refuses to put it down, which makes Amanda's action arguably one of mercy. Still, if you don't like animal cruelty, be careful with this movie.
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***END SPOILERS***
Since Amanda is under strict watch, she refuses to be the one to actually kill Mark, so the young ladies hire Tim (Anton Yelchin, in his final role before his untimely death in 2016), a drug-pusher and ne'er-do-well, to break in and shoot Mark during a weekend when both Lily and Amanda will be out of town.
Do things go according to plan? I bet you can guess that they do not.
I'll stop there with plot revelations and instead talk about something I REALLY appreciated about Thoroughbreds. Not only does it pass the Bechdel test, I couldn't help but observe that even though the film stars two beautiful, young actresses there are no stereotypical exploitative shots in the entire movie. The actresses are fully clothed throughout the entire movie. There's no sex. There's almost no sex talk. Why is this so cool and important? Well--how many movies and TV shows about teen girls (usually played by actresses older than their characters) linger on youthful, sexy bodies? How many movies and TV shows fetishize teen girlhood and teen sexuality? Look, I'm not against the portrayal of teen sexuality and all that, but it's refreshing to have a movie that focuses on teen girls and completely removes sex and sexiness from the story. It 100% focuses on friendship (albeit a pretty fucked up relationship).
And that's the other thing I liked about the movie: so many portrayals of teen girls are about how bitchy girls can be to one another. But Thoroughbreds has none of that. After some initial awkwardness, Lily and Amanda fall into a unique friendship. I say "unique" because, after all, Amanda is a sociopath and that creates some emotional barriers to say the least. But Lily isn't exactly an angel either. The two girls forge a connection that leads to a pretty surprising conclusion.
I want to be clear that Thoroughbreds is not a "feel-good" movie. It's not a film where everyone hugs and cries and says "I love you" in the end. But it's also not your typical teen movie and it defies genre expectations at nearly every turn. It's a dark, satirical look at what female friendship can be when women come together to bring down a *literal* patriarch.
Grade: A-
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