Anya Taylor-Joy’s 93-Minute Thriller Is Quietly One of the Best Mysteries on Prime Video

Anya Taylor-Joy burst onto the scene in a spell-binding performance that no one is likely to forget for some time. Robert Eggers’ feature film debut, The Witch, showcased the performer’s talents, and she instantly rose to the top. Roles in Furiosa and Dune: Part Two have defined her career thus far, but there may be one movie that passed viewers by. In 2017, Taylor-Joy co-starred with House of the Dragon’s own Olivia Cooke in a crime thriller unlike anything else.

Throughbreds was a directorial first for Cory Finley and is utterly unique. Many creatives have attempted to pull off psychopathic teenage girls in the past, but this attempt was startling and extremely specific. The characters in the Prime Video mystery aren’t caricatures but fleshed-out people who just happen to be in an extremely heightened story.

‘Thoroughbreds’ Captures the Viciousness of Teenage Girlhood

Cory Finley is one of the rare male directors who writes female characters who are complex and believable. Only comparable to Ari Aster’s depiction of Dani Arbor (Florence Pugh) in Midsommar. Finley also portrays women not just as set pieces or vehicles for plot, but in their complex and sometimes terrible glory. Thoroughbreds’ entire concept depends on how difficult these girls are, and it pulls it off spectacularly.

The narrative is a thrilling mystery about two teenage girls in the upper-class of suburban Connecticut. Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy) is a popular student who agrees to tutor an outcast, Amanda (Olivia Cooke). Because of a mental disorder, Amanda has no emotions, but she and Lily find common ground and form a tight bond. When Amanda suggests they kill Lily’s abusive stepfather, Mark (Paul Sparks), the affluent girl is disturbed, but it doesn’t take long for her to come around to her line of thinking.

Mark enrolls Lily in a boarding school for girls with behavioral issues, putting a ticking clock on the plan. The tight, 93-minute film wastes no time in establishing the stakes for these characters and showing the unbreakable and sometimes inscrutable bond between teenage girls. Unlike similar dark fare such as Heathers, which leans more into comedic territory, Thoroughbreds relishes the darkness of female friendships. This bond leads up to an ending that has to be seen to be believed.

The story embraces the darkness and, in some ways, celebrates it as a form of love attachment. Lily and Amanda show each other their affection by extremely violent acts. Even though Amanda allegedly has no emotions, she clearly has some sort of loyalty to Lily. She sacrifices everything to prove herself to the other girl in perhaps the only form of genuine attachment she has ever had. These deep character facets are fascinating and only appear in other fare featuring darkly motivated women, such as Amy Elliott-Dunne in Gone Girl.

Thoroughbreds refuses to judge its characters in a way that is refreshing in this day and age. Male-written stories such as The Last of Us are so afraid of showing that women are irredeemable monsters that it is breathtaking when someone pulls the trigger on such a story. Thoroughbreds is one of the best mysteries out there, not just because of the narrative, but also because of the colorful characters that populate the story.