Ride-or-die friendship is taken to the literal level in the upcoming film Thoroughbreds.
Bates Motel actress Olivia Cooke and newly minted scream queen Anya Taylor-Joy, of The Witch and Split, have teamed up for a new movie that basically asks, "What if Dexter Morgan was a teenage girl?"
The black comedy, which recently dropped a new trailer, stars Taylor-Joy as Lily, a girl under the thumb of her awful stepfather Mark (Paul Sparks). In the trailer, Lily is described as overly emotional. Her friend Amanda (Cooke), however, is entirely apathetic — and, very possibly, a sociopath.
"I don't have any feelings, ever," Amanda says in the clip. "That doesn't necessarily make me a bad person. It just means I have to work a little harder...to be good."
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But "be good" these two do not. When Mark threatens to send Lily off to boarding school, Amanda suggests a twisted plan — why not just kill Mark and be done with it?
Soon, the two are teaming up with local drug dealer Tim (the late Anton Yelchin, in one of his final roles), whom they bring aboard to off Lily's stepdad. Naturally, hijinks ensue — but that's not even the most exciting part of the movie.
Murder plots aren't pretty, and I'm kind of thrilled by the prospect of a film that allows two teenage girls to explore such vile messiness. It's not that women-perpetuated violence doesn't exist in pop culture, it's just stories of it are quite rare. Most iconic psychopaths within pop culture — such as American Psycho's Patrick Bateman or Silence of the Lambs' Hannibal Lecter — are men. Yet there's something intriguing about a teenage girl being utterly devoid of emotions when, so often, the media depicts them as characters who feel everything, all at once. (See: Lady Bird.)
Let Thoroughbreds serve as a casual reminder that teen girls have a lot going on these days. And yes: They can plot murder just as good as the boys.
Watch the trailer below.