Given how blatantly transparent it has become in recent months that the rich dictate, often without thought or mercy, the fate of the poor, Locked would seem to be in a perfect position to rile up the 99% and grab some free op-ed space. Unfortunately, it’s not quite ambitious enough nor insightful enough for that. The film, about a petty thug who breaks into a luxury SUV only to find it’s been booby-trapped by an unseen and obscenely wealthy tormentor, is a B-movie more interested in torturing its main character than inspiring the hoi polloi to march in the streets. But with a few decent tricks up its tailpipe, the latest from Brightburn director David Yarovesky sputters to a tattered and bloody checkered flag.
That main character is played by a terrific Bill Skarsgård (It, Nosferatu), and he’s the only person on screen for most of the film. His character, a hard-up thief named Eddie, is stuck inside a luxury car customized to keep him starving, thirsty, freezing or boiling, in pain and unable to escape, much to the delight of a vengeful member of the privileged class heard through the car’s speakers (and voiced with a cash-grabbing level of enthusiasm by Anthony Hopkins).
Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead, 2002’s Spider-Man) is listed as a producer, but don’t assume that’s a mark of quality. Much like Brightburn, Locked elevates a promising logline with just enough smarts to claim it’s got more on its mind than blood and thrills, even if its commentary on class division and inequality is as shallow as the SUV’s cupholder.
‘Locked’ Is About Wealth Inequality…and Torturing a Desperate Criminal
- Bill Skarsgård is in every frame, often by himself, and he easily carries the film.
- The movie remains moderately tense as we wonder how the story will resolve itself.
- Anthony Hopkins is clearly slumming but at least he classes up the joint.
- The screws don’t turn as effectively as in similar films like Buried.
- Discussions about morality meant to add contemporary relevance are high school level.
- The climax is too drawn out and the ending is pat.
Locked is based on the 2019 Argentinian thriller, 4×4. The film was subsequently remade in Brazil (A Jaula) and India (Dongalunnaru Jaagratha), which speaks to how sadly universal its take on social and financial disparities has become. So for this Americanized go-around, screenwriter Michael Arlen Ross has a lengthy cheat sheet to go by. But he dumbs down his version in predictably American ways, like adding a high-speed chase, more gruesome deaths, and a climax that jettisons most of 4×4’s finer point-making.
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Not one for subtlety, Yarovesky sets the table with ornately dismal shots of urban despair that include crumbling, trash-strewn, graffitied streets populated by homeless wastrels. In this dead-end environment lives Eddie (Skarsgård), a two-bit thief too busy stealing wallets and being mistaken for a drug user to pick up his daughter at school or reconcile with his girlfriend.
Looking for something to steal for fast cash, he happens upon an unlocked, très lux SUV in an outdoor parking lot and climbs in. When the doors click shut and he can’t get out, Eddie panics in a full-blown rage, which Yarovesky and his versatile and clever DP Michael Dallatore dramatize with a fast and swirling camera. As an exhausting and confused Eddie ponders his next move, the car receives an incoming call from someone mysteriously named Answer Me.
Bill Skarsgård Is Becoming a Bad Guy Supreme
Skarsgård, with his high, Scandinavian cheekbones and full lips that curl into a sly, cruel smile, has found a niche in monstrously out-there villain roles like Pennywise in the horror smash It and Count Orlok in Robert Egger’s Nosferatu. Yet there’s also a runway model, Austin Butler-adjacent, pouty handsomeness to him that suggests he could be more than just a “head down, eyes up” villain. Locked gives him a chance to go full-range, earning our scorn and, later, our sympathy, and he manages both ends quite well.
Initially, Skarsgård gives us little reason to side with Eddie. We reckon he’s getting his just deserts when he answers the SUV’s phone and the voice reveals itself to be that of William (Hopkins), a wealthy doctor whose car has been broken into by six different thieves. Eddie is the unlucky seventh and William is eager to use his SUV to mete out a unique brand of rich, Corinthian justice.
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With no cell service available from inside the camera-rigged car, William is free to extract his days-long revenge upon society’s scum, of which Eddie has become the sole representation. William shocks his captive using electrical wires built into the seats, cranks up the heat for hours at a time, and plays polka music at extreme volumes. During all this, William regales Eddie with the events in his life that left him lamenting a broken society where “good people live in fear.” And the film does reel you in with William’s carrot and stick gamesmanship; at one point, he offers to turn off the AC if a shivering Eddie apologizes for cursing and, later, he forces Eddie to show contrition for his crimes.
But when William begins acting too sadistically, including threatening Eddie’s daughter, our sympathies shift. It’s an effective dramatic turnaround, certainly more so than Eddie’s ability to hold up his end of the dialectic, unless you buy the idea that this punk has actually read Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
‘Locked’ Is the ‘Saw’ Series on Wheels
Yes, Locked immediately brings to mind the “man in a car, talking on the phone” movie, Locke. Regardless, the most appropriate comp for Locked is neither that 2013 film nor 2010’s similarly claustrophobic thriller Buried starring Ryan Reynolds, nor even 2023’s Retribution (with Liam Neeson trapped in a car and forced to follow instructions). Instead, it feels like a spiritual successor to the Saw series. In those films, the traps created by the cancer-stricken Jigsaw are a twisted motivation for victims to appreciate their lives which, let’s face it, was always a weak-sauce excuse for the filmmakers to just torture people on screen.
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Locked does a better job feigning interest in its deeper meaning, one that speaks to an era when, in real life, the police may not show up when someone like Eddie calls for help. It thankfully doesn’t have Saw’s snuff film-cruelty streak, but it could have kept up the Saw-like intensity in more creative ways. When Yarovesky opens up the story to have William drive the SUV via remote control and then take a trip up a mountain in a drawn-out climax, the air seeps out of the film’s proverbial tires in ways that are sadly typical for a thrill-chasing American remake. Indeed, Locked is too enamored of its creative suffering to make us celebrate a cruel one-percenter getting what’s coming to him. But, considering the times, we’ll take what we can get.
Locked, a production of ZQ Entertainment and Raimi Productions and distributed by The Avenue, will be released in theaters March 21.
