Thoroughbreds (Corey Finley, 2017) USA

Reviewed by Bryan Austin Gillison. Viewed at the AFI Film Festival 2016.

I will admit my first impression was not good. Yes it is beautiful, expensive, well cast, and shiny. Yes it has a fantastic score and an even more impressive set. Yes it revolved around rich children and their manufactured problems. Yes I felt I had seen this before. What I didn’t count on was the revisionist style that snuck up on me as these characters unfolded into the most venomous flowers the world has ever encountered.

It’s getting a bit old, the narrative of rich people being the norm. They aren’t, and they are ever increasingly far from it. I think with the current oligarchical nature of our multi-national corporate governing forces that stories about rich folks are getting stale and honestly a bit offensive. The utter opulence of the entire scene made every character utterly unreliable and it certainly didn’t help that they are all true horrors. It became obvious that that was the director’s point.

The actresses in this film do an impressive job of shape shifting and conveying endless nuance. Much of the read of these two is without dialogue, we can feel the sexual tension. We can feel the familial tension. We can feel the violence approaching. The film sticks to pretty well trodden tropes of the loser drug dealer, or the rich bad girl, or the privileged fuck up, or the evil step dad. This somehow does not take away from the fresh feel and the unique story twists.

Flawless production, drum tight audio, and very precise performances are the backbone of this piece. The creepy score is accented by very specific sound effects that felt fresh and particular to the film. The use of rising volume to create suspense is subtle and effective as the film progresses.

I think the best part of this film is the unexpected dry humor. The unexpected ways they made me laugh were very cathartic and enhanced the experience. I mean who would expect a healthy number of chuckles in a film about kids murdering their father for pretty much no reason other than boredom? Not me, but it was a hell of a lot of fun.

This film lulled me into a smug state of self assured knowledge- I mean I really thought I had the score from the start- and then it tears that all into shreds like a trust fund kid does her step Dad. This sense of unease paired with familiarity, this sense of knowing and the unknown is very effective and lent a freshness to a very old plot device. I would recommend this film in the future and I look forward to giving it a much closer look when it comes to video.