Thoroughbreds (2018)
Thoroughbreds lays out the facets of our characters’ personalities and rearranges them dramatically; but what provokes such profound alteration? Is the ability to change innate or does it require an outside force? Such questions are very near to this film’s thematic center of gravity.
Lily, portrayed with great dynamism by Anya Taylor-Joy, starts as deeply emotional, but remains highly repressed. Opposite her is Olivia Cooke's Amanda, a self-proclaimed emotionless person who, in her apparent anhedonia, spends her days in mimicry and muted musing.
The film also asks the question: without proper human feelings, what capacity does the person have for moral compliance? Or even basic moral understanding? Amanda has her own philosophy: "[It] doesn't necessarily make me a bad person, it just means I have to work a little harder than everyone else to be good".
Symmetric and well centered shots are present throughout, placing our characters alongside or opposite one another as they scheme. Their plot, to kill Lily’s hateful step-father, partially emerges from Amanda’s well-known past with violence, having euthanized her own horse in extreme fashion. The color choices in these scenes are subdued but captured in total clarity and match the grim discussion at hand.
The atmosphere of the film gradually shifts to being more sinister as the plan takes shape. Music marks the tension of their conversations, possessing an unsettling and lurking quality. This effectively creates tension surrounding a scarcely spoken impending doom. When the time comes, a reversal of roles takes place. Lily, the sentimental of the pair, has hatched a plan to kill her step-father herself while framing Amanda for it. She confesses at the last minute. Amanda, our supposed anhedonic character, is feeling sentimental and insists on following through with the plan, engaging in a grand gesture of self-sacrifice.
At its conclusion, the film calls attention to the alterations our characters have undergone. Reinforcing their actions above, Amanda seems more conventionally socialized and emotional than her former self, sending a personal letter to Lily. On the other hand, Lily, who was once burdened by overwhelming emotion, now seems cool and detached. When asked about what the letter contained, she simply responds, “I don’t know. I threw it away.”
Questions abound: did the characters change each other or was it their circumstances? Was Lily always destined for violence or did her friendship with Amanda prompt something? Was Amanda ever really without emotion or was she simply repressed in her own way? The film doesn’t answer these questions individually, instead allowing the depictions of shifts in worldview to speak for themselves.
A compelling examination of the human capacity for violence and change, Thoroughbreds delivers a dark story wherein first appearances can be deceiving to a deadly degree.