At the beginning of the year, I would have never predicted that I would see two movies that mostly take place inside a car, let alone that I would see them within two weeks of each other. And yet, here we are. At SXSW I watched the premiere of Hallow Road, a harrowing, two-person thriller with some great twists and turns, and today I saw Locked, a somewhat tense two-person thriller with no twists or turns. In fact, for most of the movie, the car is parked.
Locked is the latest film by David Yarovesky, who directed the surprisingly fun and clever Brightburn, back in 2019. Locked, on the other hand, keeps things conventional, never quite leaning into the pulpy potential of its premise. There's a kickass movie in here that's unrealized due to a straightforward story with no surprises or revelations.
Bill Skarsgård plays Eddie, a street-smart, lovable guy who's in debt and forced to resort to petty crime to simply survive. He's a trope movie dad who loves his baby girl, and desperately wants to provide for her. A dad who adores his young daughter is movie shorthand for, "You see, deep down he's a sensitive guy despite his circumstances." Given how generic the character is written, Skarsgård brings his A-game and gives a strong, "what would you do?" solo performance.
In order to make some quick cash, Eddie attempts to break into cars and grab whatever he can. Unfortunately, he picks the wrong car, an expensive, fully custom luxury SUV that locks him inside. The vehicle is equipped with bullet-proof glass, a cell-signal blocker, six video cameras, and most importantly, a phone that allows the captor to communicate with Eddie.
And that captor is the unmistakable voice of Anthony Hopkins who is as terrific (as always) given what he had to work with. He plays William, a bitter and wealthy man who has designed this car as a trap to lure petty thieves into so he can teach them a lesson by torturing them. The car is rigged up with tasers that shock Eddie for any infraction and William can even blast polka music on the sound system when he really means business. Eddie has no food or water, so must comply with William's every demand in order to survive.
It reminded me a little of the setup for the Saw films where we mostly only hear the Jigsaw killer as he places more and more sadistic demands on his victims. In both that series and Locked, the "bad guy" is driven by a moral code, a certain degree of vengeance. In the case of Saw, we end up siding with Jigsaw because his victims are bad people. It's a fun dynamic, causing us to examine our own biases about good and bad. In Locked, William is basically a grouchy old man who is bitter at the state of the world and how New York has become a haven for criminals. Ho-hum.
I desperately wanted there to be some sort of twist, something a little deeper to explain William's need to punish this one petty criminal. But the film plays it straight. Yup. Just a bad guy. No nuance, no intriguing motivation. And Eddie is a good guy (remember, he has a really cute daughter he adores). Plus he's ruggedly handsome lol.
I wonder how long it took WIlliam to design and build this vehicle? It seems like a huge amount of time, money, and effort to just use it to mess with this one guy. I love suspending disbelief, but everything that happens in Locked seems to fall just a little too neatly into place, including what might be a possible escape plan. Oh yeah! I remember, in the opening scene Eddie tells someone he's "good with cars".
The film touches on themes of wealthy privilege and the struggles of common people, but never explores these in much depth, and in the third act we're left with a run-of-the-mill action thriller that strains plausibility. (I guess l knew all along that car would have to move at some point.) Oh, did I mention William is even capable of causing harm to Eddie's sweet baby girl? No doubt about it, now we know he's a bad guy.
Oh, and immediately after the film, I actually Googled if an action Eddie takes at the end would have been possible. (Seems dubious.) Without giving a spoiler, I was a little stunned by a lack of understanding as to why he couldn't have done this earlier in the movie.
As a horror fan, I kept thinking about Hannibal Lecter, the deliciously nuanced villain Hopkins portrayed in Silence of the Lambs. Locked could have been a fantastic psychological thriller if we could have learned more about its villain.
Locked is a competent film that could have been a heart-pounding, claustrophobic psychological thriller if it had been willing to dig deeper into its characters. It's never boring, and it'll likely work fine as a casual streaming pick. But ultimately, its solid performances are weighed down by a script that never dares to surprise.
