Cory Finley
2 connections found
Filmography
View:
Connections, in both directions
Strangers on a Train (1951)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
influenced Thoroughbreds (2018)
Themes Plot
Though it’s in the same genre as Heavenly Creatures or Poison Ivy, the film this reminded me of most was Strangers on a Train.
Thoroughbreds’s best trick is to convince us, through the aching stillness of its stars’ eyes, that it might not actually be a twisty, twisted thriller inspired by the likes of Strangers on a Train.
Like a lot of movies by first-time directors, “Thoroughbreds” wears its influences on its sleeve: a little “Heavenly Creatures,” some “Strangers On A Train,” a bit of “Foxcatcher,” a pinch of “Gossip Girl,” an echo of Kenneth Lonergan’s “This Is Our Youth” in the witty writing.
It’s an unconscionable and completely inappropriate suggestion — the kind that only someone with Amanda’s blunt, cold-bloodedly pragmatic attitude could make, although it’s just the sort of hypothetical that attracts us to the works of “Strangers on a Train” novelist Patricia Highsmith, or more outrageously, films like “Jawbreaker” and “Heathers,” whose influence can also be found lurking beneath this movie’s elegant surface.
That idea of plotting a homicide – vibing nicely on Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, not to mention Heathers and Heavenly Creatures – rouses the usually indifferent Amanda.
It plays at times like a new take on Strangers on a Train in which both parties commit to unspeakable acts without any reservations.
He combines the delicious bitchiness and verbal acrobatics of “ Heathers ” with the structural rigidity and tonal restraint of Yorgos Lanthimos , the Greek director of such off-kilter dramas as “ Dogtooth ” and “ The Lobster .”
The blend of formal suavity and deadpan domestic absurdism at times reminded me of the work of the director Yorgos Lanthimos (“The Lobster”).