Critics reviews

Both [The Miseducation of Cameron Post and Boy Erased] are worth your time; both, in their way, are intelligent message movies that refuse to hide their outrage at a repressive practice that, as a coda before the Boy Erased end credits informs, 36 American states still allow.

Finley has created a Heathers or a Jawbreaker for the contemporary wealth gap, but in doing so he has replaced the busy, unpredictable action and wit of those films with an arty minimalism that is Bressonian or at least Hal Hartleyan... [Thoroughbreds] just lies there, but crisply, neatly, like an Instagram photo or gallery art.

How much you find the whole of Thoroughbreds to be worth it will likely depend on how much Cooke and Taylor-Joy can carry it. For me, that answer was “pretty darn far.” The film may not have a ton of insight on the subject of amoral murder as a bonding activity, but it’s an incredibly well-acted bit of provocation just the same.

Elegant, cruel and precise in its commentary on the turmoil inherent in being a teenage girl, the film works brilliantly up until the final act, its mordant, manicured savagery heightened by a primal score... [Thoroughbreds] is an eye-catching calling card for first-time writer-director Cory Finley, and a reminder of how great a loss to cinema was Yelchin’s untimely death.

The movie is slight, at just over 90 minutes, but unfolds with origami neatness and a shrewd eye for the dynamics of class and power gone hideously awry. Finley knows his milieu, and we should all look out for what he does next... Thoroughbreds is as sharp as a paper cut. It draws blood.

Actually, Dogtooth meets Heathers is closer to the daring deadpan delivery of the debut writer/director Cory Finley’s stylised calling card. Both actresses excel, even if their spoilt, sociopathic characters are so fabulously unlikeable that it’s ultimately impossible to care for them.

Dripping with malice and deadpan wit, Thoroughbreds is overly mannered but often devilishly entertaining.

From the precise editing to the not-a-word-out-of-place dialogue, or from the intricately tailored costumes to the alternately clattering and eerie score, this is one of the most carefully marshalled first films in donkey’s years.

[Thoroughbreds] is crisply organised, gorgeously shot, and won’t do anyone’s careers any harm. Whether it contains a verifiable heartbeat is another matter. A little like Cooke’s character... it doesn’t have easy access to human emotion, instead deploying a series of techniques to fake it.

[A] savage, visually inventive, black comedy... [Cooke] has created one of the most fascinating anti-heroines of the year. A sly superstar has come of age.

[Thoroughbreds] is a psychological suspense thriller and an anhedonic daymare: absorbing, if finally anticlimactic. It is Bret Easton Ellis out of Patricia Highsmith, and there’s also an interesting touch of Lady Macbeth’s murderous MO... Cooke and Taylor-Joy are convincing in their ruthlessness: Stepford sisters in the cause of self-gratification.

A morbid and stylised comedy-drama which takes us to places where few other films about the growing pains of young Americans go near... [Thoroughbreds] could easily have seemed grotesque, silly and self-indulgent. Instead, thanks to the perfectly judged performances of its two young female leads and writer-director Finley’s gift for acerbic irony, it is both unsettling and frequently very funny.