Thoroughbreds

Two privileged teenagers in tony suburban Connecticut (Olivia Cooke, Anya Taylor-Joy) hatch a plot to murder the overbearing stepfather of one of them (Paul Sparks). First-time writer-director Cory Finley has produced the kind of picture that film festival audiences and high-tone critics love to gush over, but which is in fact an artsy-fartsy crock. Finley’s idea of style is to have his actors speak in a lifeless monotone, staring straight ahead, faces as motionless as granite statues. The only sign of life in the whole movie comes, with hideous irony, from the one actor who’s no longer with us: Anton Yelchin as a small-potatoes would-be contract killer. He was on his way to being a great actor before his tragic death in 2016, and he lived long enough to show Finley, Cooke and Taylor-Joy how it’s done.