A down-on-his-luck father finds himself trapped in a state-of-the-art car in Locked, a (mostly) riveting thriller opening in local cinemas this weekend that was introduced by star Bill Skarsgård and Czech producer Petr Jákl at its European premiere in Prague last weekend. This high-concept, white-knuckle thriller benefits greatly from two powerhouse performances and inventive filmmaking from director David Yarovesky (Brightburn), which help keep things interesting through an underwhelming climax.
Locked stars Skarsgård as Eddie Barrish, a pitiful courier stuck between a rock and a hard place: his van is in the shop and he’s short of the repair cost to get it out, meaning he can’t make money or even pick up his young daughter Sarah (Ashley Cartwright) from school. With his last few bucks, he buys some scratch-offs at a convenience store as one last gut-shot hope.
Eddie’s down, but he’s not quite out: from his tatted neck and bright hoodie, we infer he’s something of a hustler even before he touts his street smarts and confirms a criminal record. Walking around dystopian-modern city streets, he tests car door handles for any that might have accidentally been left open, and thinks he’s scored big when he gets inside a luxury SUV.
But Eddie couldn’t be more wrong. Not only is there nothing inside the car, which was built for the film and modeled after the Land Rover Defender—Eddie can’t get out. The doors are locked and the frame impenetrable and soundproof, the windows fully tinted, and a voice coming from the in-vehicle entertainment display informs Eddie that he’s trapped.
That man behind the voice is William (Anthony Hopkins), who tells Eddie that his car has been broken into multiple times, and the police have failed him. So he’s built this SUV as a trap to teach the next thief a lesson—one that gets increasingly dangerous as Eddie runs low on food and water, and William tortures him with electric shocks and extreme climate control settings.
Locked establishes its nifty premise within the first fifteen minutes of screentime, and culminates with a masterfully-executed sequence: as Eddie crawls through the SUV and slowly comes to the realization that he’s trapped, Michael Dallatorre’s camera impossibly swirls around Skarsgård in a single unbroken take through the tight, enclosed space. Director Yarovesky pays homage to David Fincher here, who did this kind of thing in Panic Room, while playing off his lead character’s growing anxiety.
The early scenes in Locked also do a great job of establishing the urban jungle that Eddie lives in, set against a backdrop of graffiti and concrete (the location is not specified, but Locked was shot on the streets of Vancouver). There’s some genuine affection for Eddie’s street culture that recalls 80s classics like They Live; it nicely contrasts later scenes of street life viewed from William’s point of view, vagrants and junkies glimpsed from behind the tinted glass of a luxury SUV.
Locked does such a nice job of building tension early on—and Skarsgård and Hopkins create such compelling characters—that we can look past an uneventful screenplay, adapted by Michael Arlen Ross from the 2011 Argentinean film 4 x 4, written by Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat. Still, it would have been nice to learn more about William’s ultimate plan, or see Eddie employ more of those street smarts.
The film really only lets us down during the finale, which operates on the level of a much more traditional thriller than the battle of wits and wills that has preceded it. The screenplay wants us to be rooting for Eddie and against his captor, but it doesn’t take into account the utterly compelling and largely sympathetic performance from Hopkins, which cries out for a more nuanced conclusion.
Still, Locked is a thoroughly captivating ride for most of the ride, fueled by strong performances, stylish direction, and a gripping premise. While the finale may not fully capitalize on the psychological cat-and-mouse game that came before it, this an entirely engaging thriller that delivers enough claustrophobic tension to keep audiences hooked from start to finish.
