Cinemasterworks: THOROUGHBREDS

Looking to win some popularity contests this week, so I'm gonna attack the new universally acclaimed film, Thoroughbreds.

I see pretty much everything now thanks to Moviepass, so some stinkers are inevitable. And I knew darned well I was taking a risk when I decided to see ALL FIVE MOVIES that came out last weekend (Hurricane Heist, Gringo, Thoroughbreds, The Strangers: Prey by Night, A Wrinkle in Time).

But little did I know the unendurable terrors that awaited me!

Well, not really. I mean, The Strangers: Prey by Night was okay as a stalk-and-stab film. Not much to it. The scene at the end where a character bleeds to death in a vivid blue swimming pool growing rapidly red while "Total Eclipse of the Heart" plays was a heckuva audiovisual moment. Gringo was a reasonably entertaining post-Tarantino nihilistic crime drama/comedy of errors. Hurricane Heist was exactly what it promised to be and I can find no fault with a film that makes its intentions so plain in the title.

But Thoroughbreds? Dude... Was so annoyed by it that I decided to give myself a pass on Wrinkle in Time. I loved that book as a kid and it was DARK. If ANY YA book deserved the generic YA McGritty cinematic treatment that everything gets these days, it's Wrinkle in Time. But nope, based on the trailer, looks like they took a dark, complex book and made a Disney Princess movie out of it.

NO SALE.

I WON'T EVEN SEE IT FOR FREE WITH MOVIEPASS BECAUSE THAT WOULD STILL BE FINANCIALLY SUPPORTING IT!

Alright, regarding Thoroughbreds' marketing campaign: the comparison to Heathers is duplicitous and infuriating. This film has zero clever social satire, zero fun, zero seriously challenging content, just surface coldness and apathy.

There is no story momentum whatsoever in the first 40 minutes. When something approaching a story development happened, I checked my watch and literally 40 minutes of wheel-spinning mucking-about had passed.

This made Phantom Thread look like a Michael Bay film. And much like Phantom Thread, it is painfully slow, with the only surprise in the entire film being a brief “Oh! Huh...” moment five minutes from the end.

The "music" in the first few scenes is distractingly awful. It's a bunch of random percussive noises that I at first mistook as background noise from the kitchen staff within the film. It makes Captain Beefheart sound like a metronome.

Anton Yelchin deserved better for his last film. Shoulda gone out on Green Room. Sad to say that. But Green Room was awesome.

Thoroughbreds' popularity and acclaim seems to be similar to Lady Bird, where people condescendingly pat the competent film on the head and give it a participation trophy for being directed by a woman. It seems people aren’t willing to be honest and objective about female-directed films in our current political/cultural climate. I get it. But being supportive doesn't mean you can't be honest.

So let's be honest: this movie is slickly made and the performances are fine. But everything it's doing has been done before and better by countless films. 

I felt annoyed for most of its running time and I regret seeing it. The Strangers: Prey by Night is basically failsauce but at least engaged my attention or had me in suspense for a couple minutes here and there. I don’t actively regret seeing that one. It was unpretentious and fine for what it was.

Thoroughbreds is the emperor without clothes. Or at least deeply mediocre clothes. And I will call it out as such!

There. All the world's problems: solved.

-B.P. Kasik/Phony McFakename

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