Dark comedy Thoroughbreds reveals the importance of appearances

Anya Taylor-Joy and Olivia Cooke in Thoroughbreds. Image courtesy Focus Features.

In reality, the importance of maintaining appearances would prevent the two protagonists in Thoroughbreds from associating with each other. Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy) is wealthy, popular, and privileged, a teenager bound for an elite lifestyle. Amanda (Olivia Cooke) is an emotionless outcast with no notable aspirations beyond eating chips. This is a pretty formulaic setup for a generic, cheap teen movie where the shed their differences and bond to become better people or whatever. And, well, that sort of happens in a backward sense in Thoroughbreds. Whatever improvements they make results in some horrible consequences, and their most notable bonding moment involves blackmailing a loser drug dealer (Anton Yelchin) to commit murder. It’s sort of funny in the humorous way, and funny in the uncomfortable way, with the joke being how easy it is for awful people to get what they want with minimal, if any, true consequences.

Thoroughbreds is a masterful little bit of filmmaking, an incredible feat for first-time write/director Cory Finley. Finley frames his shots effectively, maximizing the distance between his characters by showing a lot of empty space between them. Rarely are they allowed to even touch one another, let alone show any true emotional affection for the others. Once the divide is broken the moment is small but momentous, a moment of growth for the characters despite the darkness surrounding them. Finley opts to show the characters' isolation to one another, visually conveying the theme and not forcing the dialog to carry the brunt of it. Thoroughbreds is an exhibition for showing and not telling, as well as implying without showing, amounting to some terrific subtle filmmaking.

There's also a lot of rule breaking in Thoroughbreds. Finley violates very basic standards for tension and suspense, spurning Chekhov's dramatic principle for showing what amounts to irrelevant things on screen. Sometimes it amounts to a very strange but effective joke, a little bit of mocking from the film to defy these rules because the joke is there isn’t really a reason something ever has to happen. But, really, Finley cleverly violates those rules to build dramatic tension and obfuscate the inevitable ending to his movie. With hindsight, it's clear the Thoroughbreds has to end the way it does, because otherwise it would ruin the arcs for Amanda and Lily, but in the moment Finley makes it difficult to know for sure which way the movie is going. He breaks the rules for a reason, because following them would be too easy and to convenient.

And, really, nothing is that easy in Thoroughbreds. Lily and Amanda are awful for each other, enabling the worst aspects of their personality and justifying their pursuits. Yet, strangely, they both come out for the better at the end of everything, each evolving into a somewhat better version of what they wanted to be. What Lily becomes is pretty horrifying, but she's more honest with herself, a bolder capable person eager to pursue her wants and desires. Amanda gets what she needs from their relationship and is punished and rewarded for it in equal measures. Her last moment on screen is sad and joyous, showing a woman who is trapped but finding feeling after years upon years of emptiness. It's my favorite part of the movie, Amanda in a room by herself with just an inch of emotion cropping on her face, revealing the possibility she might have some feeling somewhere deep down.

The movie makes that moment honest by clearing the room of anyone but herself, removing the need to put on an act for someone else’s benefit. Few moments in Thoroughbreds are designed to be that honest because appearances matter as much, if not more, than truth. Lily has to appear perfect because she is defined by that idea of perfection, living the life of a spoiled girl in an upper-crust part of Connecticut. Amanda had the same life until she gave up on trying to fake that perfection, adopting a more honest persona that is still a bit of facade, acting odd to prove she doesn’t care about being perceived as odd. Thoroughbreds makes the point that those fakeries serve as a glue to keep society together, because being honest to yourself can be a dangerous thing. Amanda and Lily become honest with themselves, and the result is dangerous for the people around them. It’s a rather odd coda for a movie to end on, but one that feels right for something as complicated as Thoroughbreds.

Review: Four and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 92 minutes

Genre: Dark Comedy

Ask Away

Target audience: People who like dark teen comedies.

Take the whole family?: Definitely not.

Theater or Netflix?: It is good and odd enough for a trip to an art-house movie theater.

RIP Anton Yelchin: This is one of Yelchin's final roles before he died, and it reinforces just how much he could have contributed as an actor. He's not in this film for very long, but he takes advantage of every minute he has on screen to bring life to a skeevy loser. Yelchin sells him as a young man with aspirations for greatness, despite being too incompetent to ever realize them.

Watch this as well?: Thoroughbreds is the dark alternative to Heavenly Creatures, Peter Jackson's fantastical movie about two teenage girls who fall head over heels for each other.

Blood and guts and hardcore punk

Alia Shawkat and Anton Yelchin star in "Green Room." Image courtesy A24.

Punk rock is one of the few artistic genres that comes with a lifestyle. People don’t just listen to punk; they are punk, following a specific aesthetic and engaging in actions considered punk. Such actions usually drawing the ire of someone, for example performing a vulgar anti-skinhead song to a gathering of Neo-Nazis as the band in “Green Room” does with its first song. It's an audacious moment writer/director Jeremy Saulnier uses to tease the possible reason why The Ain't Rights, the band at the center of the film, will have to survive a night against an opposing force of young idiots; there's a certain logic to defiance being a motivation for vengeance, that the proud history of antagonism within punk rock would be the cause of their demise.

But the root of The Ain't Rights problems are less Dead Kennedys and more “Scooby-Doo” in nature, with a few kids finding themselves in the wrong place at exactly the right time. It's a theme Saulnier has explored before in his magnificent “Blue Ruin,” and one he picks up again in the superb thriller “Green Room.” All of a sudden, the members of the gas-stealing punk rock group (composed of Anton Yelchin's Pat, Alia Shawkat's Sam, Joe Cole's Reece, and Callum Turner's Tiger) are trapped in a room with a young woman’s body, a very large man (Eric Edelstein) with a gun, and a scared girl (Imogen Poots' Amber) attempting to escape skinheads.

A premise like that evokes images of bloody carnage set to a hardcore punk score, with body parts flying about wantonly. “Green Room,” to it's benefit, is not that type of film; the presence alone of the great Patrick Stewart (playing Neo-Nazi leader Darcy Banker) assures some level of gravitas and an assurance that this midnight movie doesn't go completely off the rails. Rather, Saulnier and company are far more interested in building up through a slow burn, establishing the dire nature of The Ain't Rights' situation and building on the claustrophobia of being trapped in a room with no way out and no idea what's going on behind the door. It isn't until the stakes are set that the violence commences and Saulnier reveals how far out of their element The Ain't Rights are, and how unlikely it is they'll survive against Banker and his flock.

In a weird way, one can't get much more punk than fighting when the odds of survival are far beyond your comprehension. It's easy to pretend to be punk, to wear grimy jeans and claim Black Flag as the band you'd bring with you to a desert island (a running joke the film). It's much more impressive to prove it and battle against anti-punk ideals like totalitarianism and racial oppression represented by the machete-wielding Neo-Nazis waiting on the other side of the wall. The idea sounds like a fantasy a person might replay in his or her head while bored on a train to work, slaughtering nameless white supremacists and saving the boy or girl – Yelchin or Poots depending on the perspective – from peril.

“Green Room” is too honest to be a fantasy. When reality hits, it strikes hard and with machetes, knives, dogs and shotguns, leaving chaos and ruin in its wake. And it presents such moments with great intensity and with the right amount of graphic to keep it away from camp territory. The way “Green Room” builds up and eventually plays out reflects Saulnier's talents as a filmmaker; it's exceedingly difficult to make audiences gasp at the right moments for the right reasons. Muffled sounds of awe and appreciation popped out quite a bit from viewers who were not expecting to see that amount of blood flow or to see a perfectly executed jump scare in a movie that is not quite a horror film. “Green Room” is a bit too surreal with its dialogue and how it treats its characters to fit into stereotypical horror.

At it's heart, “Green Room” is Saulnier's ode to punk rock. It's a film about fighting the powers that be, about taking on the man with whatever weapons you have at your disposal (usually a guitar, drum set, screaming vocals and mediocre bass player) in a do-it-yourself fashion. The film is rife with ingenuity and a subtle cleverness and brilliance found in the highest ranks of the genre, while being much more complicated than its exterior indicates. And there aren't too many things more punk rock than creating art that's brutal, short, grungy and intelligent.

Review: Four and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 94 minute

Genre: Thriller

Ask Away

Target audience: Midnight film fiends and people who want to see Patrick Stewart break a little bad.

Take the whole family?: A few dog maulings and the general bloody mayhem contained in this film make it a no go for kids.

Theater or Netflix?: An awesome film to watch with a late-night crowd.

How great is Patrick Stewart?: He is nothing less than fantastic in “Green Room.” He’s a ferociously quiet figure whose most dangerous when he's deciphering depicted working his way through the puzzle of the situation. Stewart playing a Neo-Nazi runs against his most well-regarded role as the peaceful Captain Picard, but there are elements of Picard in Darcy Banker; both are smart, capable men whose leadership skills are never in doubt.

Watch this as well?: Director Jeremy Saulnier's “Blue Ruin” is a terrific film in its own right and shares a few themes and a lot of imagery with “Green Room.” Also watch the original “Assault on Precinct 13” directed by John Carpenter and “Mulholland Drive,” which shares a calm surrealness in the dialogue.

Director Jeremy Saulnier talks 'Green Room,' Patrick Stewart, and the allure of shooting in the woods

Patrick Stewart, center, stars in Jeremy Saulnier's "Green Room." Image courtesy A24.

Coming off the heels of the spectacular revenge film “Blue Ruin,” writer/director Jeremy Saulnier went in a slightly different direction with his new film, “Green Room,” about a punk rock band trying to survive a night with skinheads. The film features Anton Yelchin, Alia Shawkat and Imogen Poots as members of the band and a new acquaintance trying to stay alive against the collection of racists led by the charismatic Patrick Stewart.

We interviewed Saulnier over the phone the night after a screening in Boston to discuss the film, including his casting of Stewart, his reasons for shooting in the woods, writing believable dialogue, and finding humor in tense situations. The interview has been edited for clarity and for brevity's sake. A complete, if audibly challenged, recording of the interview is available here.

Q: How did you play with Patrick Stewart's persona? He's best known for his role as Captain Picard on “Star Trek” and from his goofy adventures with Ian McKellen in public, and while there's a tonal shift, he's not that far from being Picard.

Jeremy Saulnier: Of course as an audience member myself I really do appreciate his esteemed career, complexity, association with these big franchises. But it's my job as a director to have blinders on. I did not factor into me casting it; it certainly factored into how our production valued him. But I had to ignore all that. I really had a character in mind when I wrote the screenplay.

I never thought I'd ever get someone like Patrick Stewart to play it, so that was amazing. But when he signed on he acclimated to this world I had built and just trying to stay insulated from everything else. So this is just actor, director trying to come together for a quiet performance.

Q: My favorite moment with him is a line toward the end about how he's not so scary in the light. He's a bogeyman for much of this film for the characters. The characters mostly hear his voice, but when they finally see him they aren't that impressed by him.

Saulnier: Yeah. That was really fun. That line came to me when I was breaking down the script and realized they never actually saw him at all. So I added a little scene, added that one shot where Patrick Stewart is backing away from the door. I love all the kids see is a sliver of him backing away, not in an aggressive pose. That's one of my favorite shots in the film.

It added such a great dynamic to finally confront the aggressor and how mundane he is, how stripped down and human he is. Knowing the carnage Patrick Stewart's character Darcy had put them through makes it all the more horrifying. That was the point of it, how things erupt, how miscommunication and self-preservation can lead to such terrible violence. You actually have to face each other, it's a whole different scenario.

Q: There are definitely elements of horror in this film, and I think one of the ones I noticed with this and “Blue Ruin” is the houses in the middle nowhere are the most dangerous places. The further you get from civilization the scarier things are. On your end, is that something that you perceive from growing up away from the woods?

Saulnier: I grew up in Virginia and it certainly was the suburb, but I've always been attracted to the outdoors. I'm not really scared of them; I just find them visually more interesting than a lot of urban areas. I'm fond of nature and it plays really well on camera. It just happens the movies I make I like them to be isolated environments; it's serves the narrative. Living in a van touring in Oregon, they're on the coast, they're in a cornfield, they're on all sorts of different terrains. I just love the variety of the geography of Oregon. It has mountains and cornfields and coastal areas and rainforests. I think it's more about my visual attraction to those areas that guides me to set some of my films there.

My first film actually is “Murder Party.” It's actually similar in some respects that it's an overnight, contained horror film. It's more of a comedy and it takes place in more of an urban area, in the heart of Williamsburg and Bushwick Brooklyn. So, no matter where I am, I find ways to make it remote and scary even when you're right in the middle of New York City.

Q: Something with the characters remind me of David Lynch. A scene discussing cartridges and bullets reminds me of a moment from “Mulholland Drive” in which there's a weird surreal normalcy. Is that something you see how people would react in that type of situation?

Saulnier: I've never actually seen that movie. But I like to write things to make them human and make them plausible and have the characters really interacting with each other and not to benefit the audience or the narrative in any sort of contrived way. I definitely like to downplay things; if there's a default for me it's extreme situations but subtle performances and grounded emotional character arcs.

When you walk past people or when you're eavesdropping on people on the subway you hear the strangest things and it's fun to kind of take these little slices of life and hear observations in your everyday and inject them into movie. Often times in movies you just have so much artificiality and people don't speak like humans actually do. So it's fun to have the opportunity to design stories and create characters that really adhere to more of observable human behavior, so when you put them on screen they're more relatable. People really find it exciting to have access to real characters and it's easier for them to have characters who are behaving maybe not with a clear logic but meaningful and compulsive manner.

Q: It's also kind of humorous. It's unexpectedly funny.

Saulnier: I love comedy. I like to mine it naturally in the stories I'm telling and not really force it. As long as the characters aren't trying to be funny themselves and the actors aren't forcing it, there are so many opportunities for comedy. I just let them breathe naturally, once in awhile I'll highlight them.

How many times has somebody gone from laughing to crying or crying to laughing? These things are often intertwined and it's about your perspective. I put my characters through hell but it's OK for the audience once in a while to find a little I guess levity here and there.

Q: The one thing I noticed with this and “Blue Ruin” is revenge is a pretty heavy theme. At the end they could have walked away but they opted to continue forward.

Saulnier: There's some sort of indication that did they see all of them die? There's a hint that someone might be alive or there's some unfinished business. But yeah, there's like traditional revenge, but this is more survivor and loyalty; these are the actual victims of the crime. “Blue Ruin” is certainly more traditional revenge and “Green Room” is more survival.

Q: But both have characters who often find themselves out of their element.

Saulnier: It gets complicated.