THOROUGHBREDS: Nothing New, But It’s Still Snarky Fun

When you’ve lived a privileged life where cost has never been an object, no price is too high to punish those who have dared to disrupt your perfect existence. That’s the message carried within the twisted, bitter heart of Thoroughbreds, the debut feature from playwright Cory Finley. The film about two vengeful teenage girls from the right side of the tracks has earned comparisons to Heathers, Heavenly Creatures, and American Psycho thanks to the streak of pitch-black humor running through its violent storyline.

Yet Thoroughbreds is no mere retread, presenting pretty girls smeared with blood just to shock and awe us. It’s enough fun to be appreciated on its own merits, thanks in large part to the two rising stars at its center.

Silver Spoons

Amanda (Olivia Cooke) and Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy) grew up together in the upper-class suburbs of Connecticut, but in recent years they’ve grown apart. Amanda is a literally unfeeling girl; as she explains it, “I don’t have any feelings, ever. And that doesn’t necessarily make me a bad person, it just means I have to work a little harder to be good.”

She’s been recently taken out of school and is awaiting trial for an incident involving her beloved horse, which has inspired no shortage of gossip among her peers. Lily, on the other hand, has been doing so well at her prestigious boarding school that she finished the semester in March – or at least, that’s what she tells Amanda. The two estranged friends are brought back together when Amanda’s mother hires Lily to tutor Amanda in preparation for exams.

Despite not having seen her friend in some time, Amanda immediately guesses that not all is right in Lily’s picture-perfect world. The main culprit? Lily’s stepdad, Mark (Paul Sparks), a fitness freak who threatens to ship Lily off to a boarding school for problem girls instead of letting her return to the tony confines of her previous school. Lily’s mother is too fragile to stand up for her daughter, so Amanda encourages Lily to take matters into her own hands. Or, as she bluntly asks Lily one evening, “Ever think about just killing him?”

A Beautiful Nightmare

Finley’s sharp and succinct script is packed with dialogue that is deliciously snarky without making his characters sound like caricatures and without relying on pop culture references to get cheap laughs. His teenage girl protagonists sound like real teenage girls: smart without being overly precocious, sweetness just barely masking viciousness.

But no matter how good your script is, when you center your film on two characters as astonishingly amoral and lacking in empathy as Lily and Amanda, you better make sure you get actors whose talent and charisma can coerce the audience into caring about what happens to them. Fortunately for Thoroughbreds, the film’s two leading ladies get the job done with gusto.

Anya Taylor-Joy, whose striking lead performance in The Witch announced her as an actress to watch, is just as remarkable here as Lily, the golden girl hiding a pitch-black center. At first, Lily seems as perfect as a photo in a glossy magazine: all sleek hair and smart clothes, and with a voice so smooth that it barely even wavers when Amanda catches her in a lie.

But it isn’t long before cracks start to split this elegantly curated facade, revealing the ugliness within, and Taylor-Joy plays this revelation with a subtlety that makes Lily all the more frightening. Even more terrifyingly magnetic is Olivia Cooke as Amanda; with her unabashed bluntness and dry humor, she almost manages to make sociopathic behavior sympathetic.

Thoroughbreds is a no-frills production befitting Finley’s past as a playwright. One could easily imagine the dialogue-driven story playing out on stage, especially since the majority of the film takes place in one location, Lily’s gigantic house. Despite its narrow scope, the girls’ world of wealth and privilege comes to life with a valuable assist from costume designer Alex Bovaird (American Honey, The Perks of Being a Wallflower), who outfits the girls in a range of babydoll dresses, summery short-shorts and oversized sunglasses that make Lily and Amanda feel both deceptively innocent and wholly adult.

The two girls’ different personalities are reflected through their personal style: Amanda usually looks like she just threw on whatever she found on her floor and ran her fingers through her hair, while Lily is much more image-conscious and put-together, maintaining the illusion of perfection up until the very end. Also helping set the scene is the haunting musical score by composer Erik Friedlander, which adds a tone of underlying menace to the crisp blue skies and sprawling green lawns.

A Final, Fitting Tribute

One cannot talk about Thoroughbreds without talking about the tragedy of Anton Yelchin. He makes his final onscreen appearance here as Tim, a convicted sex offender turned drug dealer who Lily and Amanda try to recruit to help them kill Mark. Despite that rather disturbing character description, Yelchin is heartbreakingly hilarious in the role.

Tim isn’t from the same privileged background as Lily and Amanda; he sees his budding career as a peddler of drugs to underage buyers as the only way someone like him can obtain the money and the power that these girls have had unlimited access to since birth. The difference between him and the young women who want to hire him is starkly summed up by the open-mouthed awe with which he reacts to entering Lily’s house for the first time; Lily and Amanda are in their natural habitat, but he is more like a tourist on a safari.

Tim is utterly convinced that he will one day own a house just as extravagant as the one owned by Lily’s family, even though, as the girls point out, he would have to go door to door and reveal his status as a sex offender to everyone in the neighborhood even if he did manage to move in. His fantasies are just that, utterly misguided fantasies.

Yet despite the fact that he is a creep who can’t find anyone his own age to hang out with, you can’t help but feel a bit sorry for him. Where Lily and Amanda are disturbingly cold, he is a livewire buzzing with ambition and anxiety. It’s the kind of oddball role that only Yelchin could infuse with this much humanity and humor, and it hurts to know that we’ll never see him do so ever again. Thoroughbreds feels like the perfect way to bid farewell to his unique brand of talent.

Thoroughbreds: Conclusion

Watching Thoroughbreds, one is fully aware of the debt it owes to the similar films that came before it. But that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable to watch. Female friendship has never looked so deliciously dangerous. I look forward to seeing what the considerable talents of Finley, Taylor-Joy, and Cooke decide to do next.

What do you think? Does Thoroughbreds sound like a retread of Heathers or Heavenly Creatures or an altogether different take on the teen murderer subgenre? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Thoroughbreds is released in the U.S. on March 9, 2018 and in the UK on April 6, 2018. You can find more international release dates here.