On April 17, the claustrophobic thriller «Locked» starring Bill Skarsgard and Anthony Hopkins was released in cinemas. The film is an English-language remake of the Argentine crime thriller «4×4», which was released in 2019, and was co-produced by Sam Raimi, the creator of the cult «Evil Dead». How exciting is the remote confrontation? Hannibal Lecter and Pennywise — we invite you to find out in the review below.
Pluses:
a tandem of great actors; an intriguing beginning; in some places the thriller looks really exciting; appropriate humor;
Minuses:
The film gets bogged down in monotony, because the filmmakers lack the ingenuity to crank the suspense to the max; there's not enough Anthony Hopkins; the ending is so-so;
«Under lock and key» / Locked
Genre thriller
Director David Yarovesky
Starring Bill Skashgård, Anthony Hopkins, Michael Eklund, Ashley Cartwright, Navid Charkhi
Premiere movie theaters
Year of release 2025
Website IMDb, official website
Eddie Burrish, a big-time carpenter, is desperately short of money and can’t even pick up his van from the auto repair shop to drive his daughter Sarah home from school. Searching for an extra couple of hundred bucks, Eddie decides to check the nearest parked cars in case one of them is unlocked, and the owner has forgotten something valuable. That’s how the thief spotted a luxury Dolus SUV with free access to the interior.
Once inside, carefree Eddie finds nothing but a pair of sunglasses. When he tries to go outside, he is surprised to find that all the doors are locked. Several blows on the windows with a balloon wrench don’t help either. The phone doesn’t work either. The unfortunate man is trapped in a natural belt.
When a call from a stranger comes up on the monitor, the desperate burglar has to answer it. The owner of the car, an elderly man by the sound of his voice, introduces himself as William Larsen and says that he intends to teach the intruder a good lesson. Now the slave will have to do everything possible to prevent this car from turning into a hearse for him.
The premise of the film, directed by David Yarovesky, is very interesting: a petty thief, a kind of tough guy in a pink hoodie, is unsuspecting and is trapped by a crazy old man. He tries his best to get out, but he resembles a fish that has already been caught and is helplessly floundering on the shore.
With such an introduction, torture can be twisted to a level that even Ryan Reynolds, stuffed in a coffin, would not envy. Which, in principle, the mysterious avenger successfully does — not only does Eddie have neither food nor water, but the harmful old man does not deny himself the pleasure of electrocuting the guy (the miracle car has this function), torturing him with cold or heat with the help of climate control or continuous yodeling. What about desperately drinking your urine?
Yarovesky, whose best-known project is the superhero horror «Brightburn» (2019), and screenwriter Michael Arlen Ross, who made his feature film debut with the horror «Turistas» (2006), manage to intrigue quite well at first. At the same time, their story boasts authentic, one might even say standard thriller scenes, diluted with a rather cynical humor.
For example, it rains for most of the movie, but it’s not so much meant to add to the gloomy atmosphere as to be a mocking factor for the protagonist, who is literally dying of thirst. Or it’s worth mentioning a spectacular moment (also seen in the trailer) when the unfortunate prisoner tries to shout to random passersby, and seems to succeed, but in the end it’s all in vain.
But then the film starts to get bogged down in monotony because it’s not an easy task to build a good suspense when the events take place in a limited space. And the humor quickly comes to naught; the authors’ creative imagination has clearly run out. Knowing this perfectly well, somewhere on the equator of the timing, they appropriately start the vehicle. This really revitalizes the action, which had begun to slow down noticeably. And the not-so-high tension reaches its climax in the final act when the opposing sides meet face to face.
The local torturer seems to be someone like the Jigsaw from «Saw» because he also seems to have taken up the task of re-educating wayward youth using, let’s say, radical methods, and even the merciless cancer unites the characters. Still, there is a fundamental difference between the fictional evil pensioners: while John Kramer gave his victims a chance to survive in exchange for a certain sacrifice, William Larsen, as it turns out later, is much more hostile. That is, no remorse, no lesson that the bad guy is supposed to learn from all this, can prevent the inevitable vendetta. The motives of which are obviously revealed closer to the end.
Bill Skashgård and 87-year-old Anthony Hopkins could have given this movie more than a set of standard lines about class inequality and general injustice. The former holds his own in the frame, while the latter appears for a few minutes, mostly confining himself to a voice performance.
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