Films for Breakfast

Contained thrillers are hard to pull-off, but when they’re done well, they can be incredibly impressive due to how much a filmmaker and crew can accomplish with limited resourced. Locked is pretty damn’ contained, yet never feels held back – only eager to play with the resources it has readily available. The film follows Eddie Barish (Bill Skarsgård), a thief who breaks into a luxury SUV he assumes will be an easy steal. After getting into the car, Eddie finds himself caught in a complex and deadly trap from the mysterious and possibly unhinged William (Anthony Hopkins). This quickly turns from a simple game of taunting and scaring Eddie into a legitimate fight for survival as hours and days begin to go by in the SUV.

Bill Skarsgård has been an incredibly reliable presence in the horror genre ever since starring in 2017’s IT and 2019’s IT: Chapter Two as the iconic Pennywise the Clown. And while I love his take on that character, I really began to appreciate his commitment to the genre in 2022’s Barbarian – a film that showed he had immense range and wouldn’t be tied down to typecasts. Locked continues this trend, and puts him in the leading role of a terrifying situation. Skarsgård once again delivers a really solid performance that commands a majority of the film. He plays a pretty morally grey character who we open the film doing many questionable and illegal things, but Skarsgård somehow still finds a way to make him worth rooting for as the film progresses.

Anthony Hopkins is clearly the biggest name of the film, and I thought he was absolutely delightful in both a dual vocal/live-action performance. No matter at what capacity he’s on-screen, he simultaneously feels intimidating as an antagonist as well as like he’s having the time of his life playing this character. Skarsgård and Hopkins play off of one-another fairly well, with a screenplay that is consistent and witty enough to keep anyone on their toes and invested fully in its 95-minute running time.

The film only really falls flat in the sense that it doesn’t feel like it aspires to do much other than deliver quick thrills, which isn’t even necessarily a bad thing – it’s just hard to praise it any higher, either. Director David Yarovesky is clearly intrigued with confined spaces as a setting for a film, and seeing just how many situations a single character can find himself in within the confines of an SUV. And for what the film is worth, there are plenty of gags and “set pieces” (so-to-speak) within the vehicle that feel clever.

Locked isn’t going to win any awards, but if you’re looking for either an entertaining movie to see this weekend or a solid rental/streaming watch when it becomes available, I believe the performances from Anthony Hopkins and Bill Skarsgård, as well as the reliable direction from David Yarovesky make it worth your time.