Thoroughbreds

Grade: B+

I have toyed with the idea of not putting a grade at the end of one of my movie reviews, partly as a funny prank, and also to see how it would make my readers feel if I didn’t put that button, or that period that they’ve come to expect at the end. The notion occurred to me again yesterday, after seeing Thoroughbreds. The movie just put me in that mood. I’ll say that between the two grades with which I was debating, I settled on the lower one.

Writer/director Cory Finley has made one hell of a feature film debut with Thoroughbreds, which I am happy to put in the same company with Heathers, American Psycho, Crime + Punishment in Suburbia, Ripe, and other twisted-humored dramedy thrillers. It is better than a couple of the aforementioned. I did not recognize any of the actors from other films, but everyone is effective. The story takes place in suburban Connecticut in the spring of 2016, and centers around two longtime acquaintances/off-and-on friends: Amanda and Lily. Lily lives in a massive, cavernous house, and starts seeing Amanda again when she starts coming to Lily’s house in the guise of study/tutoring sessions. It turns out Amanda’s mother just wanted her daughter to get out more and have a play date with an old friend. Amanda is unrelentingly deadpan and emotionless. She has no filter, and is bluntly honest. What a refreshing thing that can be. You always know exactly what’s up. In the opening scenes of the movie, Lily is perky, plucky, surfaced, and we get the feeling she wears an Everything’s OK mask that is concealing some deep stuff. In one of the movie’s few flaws, her transition into a personality like Amanda’s is too sudden and jarring.

Much of the plot involves the two girls talking hypothetically – and sometimes not so hypothetically – about how much better all their lives would be if Lily’s stepfather was out of the picture. I hesitated to share the following here, lest I’d be accused of being a sexist/victim-blamer/abusive villain sympathizer – but the woman I saw the movie with felt the same way, so I guess it’s safe. I didn’t think the stepdad character was all that bad. He was firm, intense, aloof, and sometimes a weirdo tyrant, but we never see him laying a finger on anybody, and much of what he says, though harsh, is fair. Plus, the girls aren’t exactly saints around him. Isn’t it interesting when a film isn’t so cut-and-dry, and has us kind of being able to see where the so-called bad guy is coming from? The acting talent is admirable, especially Olivia Cooke as Amanda. She looks like a hybrid of Natalie Portman and a young Julia Roberts, and she’s had a good year already. She is in Ready Player One, which is opening soon.

Thoroughbreds is fascinating and disturbing. It exists in a world that is separate from your typical cinematic fare, and is all the better for it.

Grade, if I must: B+