Locked (2025)

Score: 1.5 / 5

The fourth cinematic version of this story, Locked manages to be a kinetic and zippy ride that kept me guessing as to the direction it was headed. It was also repetitive to a fault and quite boring for me. This crime thriller may be some folks' cuppa, but it was not mine.

Bill Skarsgard brings his formidable skills to the fore as Eddie, a petty criminal who just wants to be free of his sins and live a safe and secure, if not comfortable, life with his young daughter Sarah. Here, he's an anxious, panicky weasel of a man whose desperation lands him in a "Dolus" (I don't speak car; is this a real thing? I don't care), a luxury SUV pimped the fuck out with all the bells and whistles you can (and can't) imagine. It's sitting conspicuously in the middle of an urban lot, unlocked, and so he naturally gets in to see what he might nab. When the car locks him in, he can't escape, attempting suddenly urgent violence and cutting his arm in the process, but to no avail. Then the digital screen begins to ring.

There's a long tradition of single-location movies with a cast of one or two actors, the best of which hinge on claustrophobia and psychological distress. Yet director David Yarovesky and his cinematographer and editors don't do much to highlight those aspects, despite almost the entire screenplay taking place in close, limited perspective on Eddie. We're taken in highly energized visual flights around the vehicle, especially in moments when it gets piloted remotely, and we soar high above, before, and behind it as it careens through city sprawl and mountainous curves alike. It's a small frustration, perhaps, but seems ill-chosen in a film meant to force us into a certain headspace.

Speaking of our remote pilot, Anthony Hopkins plays the film's antagonist, William, whose car Eddie has woefully entered. His trap is highly moralistic, sparked by a twofer personal tragedy that apparently caused sociopathic madness, and he preaches about it at length. Mostly invisible during the film, Hopkins uses his iconic voice to devastating effect, more lucid and vicious than we've seen (or, rather, heard) from him in quite a while. I should have been overjoyed by the time he graces our eyeballs by the film's climax, but by then I was so annoyed by what the screenplay created him to be that I just wanted the movie to end. Unfortunately, the climax is far too lengthy and redundant for any such simple finale.

Probably my most significant gripe with the film is its insistence on thematic -- read, moral -- ambiguity. Eddie doesn't even break into the car initially; I'd have liked a film that made him a real bad guy and then asked us to endure and consider his suffering. And suffer he does: William's bells and whistles include several torture devices and practices, which he unleashes with chilling glee. But, for all the screenplay's pontificating about ethics and legality and morality, and for all William's cleverness and vigilantism, he's very clearly labeled insane and sadistic, not unlike the lesson-teaching evils in Saw movies. So we have a bona fide monster -- personal tragedy notwithstanding -- literally torturing a highly sympathetic opportunist for 90 minutes. There's almost nothing of interest, to me, in that premise. Or in its execution here.

Perhaps most egregiously, to that point, is an extended sequence of pure horror as William directs the vehicle to slaughter other criminals on the street and then to terrorize and nearly kill Eddie's young daughter. It's this kind of tasteless trash that really boils my blood, especially as, while these scenes are occurring, William continues his endless monologue. The takeaway from the film, ultimately, is that wealthy people -- the literally crazy rich -- are a blight on society. That the "haves" can and do torture the "have-nots" and that that's unjust. No shit, Sherlock! And, for all its ado, it fails to elicit audience investment because it's never so dour that we don't think for a single minute that the quietly righteous Eddie will die. Of course he -- and we, by extension -- will escape this trap and live peacefully and more thankfully with our loved ones and eschew further crime. So the nonstop torture was really just for...fun? I think not.