Before my screening of “Locked,” director David Yarovesky (“Brightburn,” “Nightbooks”) made a surprise appearance to thank the press and the special guests in attendance, as this would be his first time watching the movie with a crowd outside of friends and colleagues. “When I started making this movie, I cannot tell you how many people said ‘Oh cool, that’s totally a streaming movie,’ […] so it’s surreal because when you walk into an AMC and see it up on the screen like this, you don’t know that it’s a tiny indie movie.” And he’s right. “Locked” is the type of indie thriller that used to be a movie theater’s bread and butter — low-budget/high-return seat-fillers like Kurt Russell’s “Breakdown” or the Jeff Bridges and Tommy Lee Jones vehicle, “Blown Away” — that are now immediately dumped onto a streamer and lost to the void of algorithms. It’s said often in the wake of the industry’s pivot to depending on big franchises whose success is kneecapped by irresponsibly huge budgets, but they really don’t make ’em like this anymore. 

Fortunately, “Locked” is a reminder of a bygone era, for good and bad. The latest addition to the canon of “White People Did What? They Got Stuck Where?” subgenre of films (coined by Nirupam Dhakal aka HugeAsMammoth) “Locked” sees Bill Skarsgård trading in his Count Orlok mustache for a Pete Davidson makeover to play Eddie, a petty criminal who quickly realizes he’s broken into the wrong luxury vehicle after he finds himself trapped inside of a boobytrapped car owned by a man named William (played by Sir Anthony Hopkins). This potentially deadly vehicle can only exist as a result of a ludicrously wealthy octogenarian with a Dirty Harry-shaped chip on his shoulder and way too much time on his hands. 

Produced by horror legend Sam Raimi and a remake of the Argentinian film “4×4,” your mileage may vary with “Locked,” an intimate piece with dedicated performances and a weirdly relatable thematic core, but thrills leaving much to be desired.

Once Eddie is in the fancy, one-of-a-kind Dolus (it’s a modified Land Rover), the film has to find ways to creatively keep watching one man trapped in a car an entertaining experience. For the most part, “Locked” is successful. Unlike “4×4,” the film includes a series of security cameras that occasionally let the audience see Eddie from William’s perspective, but it often feels distracting and interrupts the tension being built beautifully from Skarsgård’s performance. Over the years he’s proven to be one of the most endlessly watchable performers, so disrupting his flow becomes frustrating.

Additionally frustrating is the film’s restraint regarding its social politics. Both Eddie and William engage in debates about systemic neglect, the failures of the criminal justice system, poverty, and generational divides, but it doesn’t swing hard enough. Comparison is the thief of joy, but “4×4” expands the conflict outward and brings the debate to the streets (literally), whereas “Locked” keeps it firmly interpersonal between William and Eddie. The car acts as a microcosm of society, but by keeping it so intimate, it also loses the nuance of how complicated these conversations can become when factoring in the reality that social groups are not monolithic. Considering the current political climate, the sanitization often left me feeling as if the film irresponsibly handled such serious themes.

But at the same time, “Locked” is a pretty unserious movie [complimentary], with over-the-top violence and a few scenes of shockingly graphic gore that will quickly remind the audience that this is a Sam Raimi production. It’s here that the movie really picks up steam, with a terrifying chase scene featuring William remotely controlling the car to hunt down Eddie’s young daughter on her way home from school serving as the stand-out set piece of the entire film. The tension is so effective that you forget that moments earlier, we had to listen to Hopkins weaponize the word “triggered.” 

Had the film embraced its gonzo side more and committed fully to political satire exploitation, this could have had the potential to be a sleeper hit. As much as it pains me to say it, “Locked” feels destined to be the future recipient of a /Film article with a title like “This Forgotten 2025 Thriller is Finding a New Life on Netflix” (like this one), despite it being, all things considered, a pretty fun time at the movies.

“Locked” lives and dies by the performances of a trapped-in-the car Bill Skarsgård and the taunting voice of Anthony Hopkins over the vehicle’s speakers, and it’s evident that the two are having an absolute blast. Hopkins’ William in particular sounds like he’s genuinely having a field day tazing Skarsgård’s Eddie anytime he drops an f-bomb, and Skarsgård effortlessly convinces the audience that he’s one wrong move away from being killed for the entire runtime. When Hopkins finally shows up in the flesh, it’s a welcome reminder that not only is he one of the best to ever do it, but being a few years shy of 90 hasn’t slowed him down a bit.

But strangely, the tension of the film is undercut a bit by how difficult it is to relate to William. While Eddie is, on paper, the one in the “wrong” for breaking into the car, in the current American climate, it’s impossible to see him as anything other than the victim. William is the embodiment of wealthy old people complaining about the neighborhood changing on NextDoor, and even when it’s revealed that he suffered a tragic loss at the hands of criminals who went unpunished, it’s hard not to think, “Old men will really turn an expensive car into a ‘Saw’ trap instead of going to therapy, huh?” At least with Jigsaw, we understood his crimes to be a last-ditch effort. William is just sociopathic as a result of failing to deal with his own trauma. His decision to torture Eddie isn’t targeted at him, specifically. He’s instead forcing this random guy to bear the brunt of his misdirected anger. William experienced a tragic loss due to the systemic failures of our government and judicial system, and instead of remembering who the real enemy is, has decided to make it anyone he views as lesser-than’s personal problem. And therein lies the true power of “Locked.”

Aren’t we all just “poor people stuck in the rich man’s boobytrapped car with no control over our surroundings” of life?

/Film Rating: 4 out of 10

“Locked” opens in theaters on March 21, 2025.