A Movie Review: Thoroughbreds

I saw this movie months ago, but had to re-watch Heathers for comparison purposes. Of course, a few months have passed so my memory of Thoroughbreds has faded. Initial review was written after seeing the movie so that is more timely than my comparison between Thoroughbreds and Heathers.

Thoroughbreds. The movie opens with Amanda (Olivia Cooke) in the process of killing her horse -- though we don't see the actual killing. Interestingly, we don't even learn Amanda's name until well into the movie.

After the brief encounter with the horse, the movie shifts to Amanda knocking on the door of Lily's (Anya Taylor-Joy) house. It doesn't take long for us to understand that these two teenagers live in a wealthy Connecticut suburb. A maid opens the door and let's Amanda inside. The maid calls about for Lily a number of times. At this point, we immediately learn Lily's name, but still don't know the name of Amanda. It appears at first that Lily is helping tutor Amanda with the SAT. Instead, Amanda's mother has hired Lily to hang out with Amanda. The two had been close at the start of high school, but grew apart. At the moment, Amanda doesn't have any friends.

Though the two are brought together via the grease of money, they are able to reconnect their friendship. To a large extent, it seems that Amanda actually brings more to the table in terms of friendship. Lily is feeling isolated as we learn that she doesn't get along with her step-father along with one or two other tidbits of information that is provided.

The movie takes a turn to the dark side as Amanda and Lily hatch a deadly plan, which I won't go into.

I will say that I'm not in love with this movie. I really found both characters to be emotionally dead. Amanda has an excuse as she has a medical issue that prevents her from feeling emotions. Yet, Lily also is played in an emotionally dead manner. It is actually hard to see why Lily is a popular person -- we see her hanging out at a party and seems to be one of the popular kids. With such dead emotional characters, I found it hard to connect with them and see things from their point of view.

Though I didn't love this movie, I did find that it lingered in my mind. Yet, it isn't some great philosophical movie, so I'm not sure one can say that it should be given a positive review due to that. What did entice me about this movie is trying to think through the friendship between Lily and Amanda. Was it really a friendship? Or did Lily realize that she could manipulate Amanda to do what she wanted. There is an interesting scene in a pool that perhaps has Lily testing Amanda's feelings towards her. Back to why it took so long for us to find out Amanda's name? Was it because she was essentially not important, just a person to be manipulated by Lily? Did either have any moral character?

As can be seen in the one sheet, this movie is being compared to Heathers . . . it took awhile, but I finally put aside some time to re-watch Heathers. I don't recall when the last time it was that I saw Heathers. Maybe more than a decade ago. This was probably my fifth time seeing it. It definitely is one of my favorite teen movies. To me, it works perfectly with Pump Up The Volume, the Christian Slater double feature.

So is Thoroughbreds similar to Heathers? In terms of the end goal, sure, though on a more micro-basis. Though I think Heathers has something that Thoroughbreds doesn't have: morals. Both Lily and Amanda seem to have rather poor morals with little emotional responses. Heathers has Veronica (Winona Ryder) playing off of J.D. (Christian Slater). Yes, Veronica is pulled into a couple of J.D.'s murders, but you can tell that she is horrified. She is someone who has morals and emotions. As mentioned in my review of Thoroughbreds, I don't think either character does. And even J.D.'s quest had a grander vision versus the more microcosm that surrounded Lily and Amanda. To me, Heathers is a movie that connects deeper with the viewer .