Bill Skarsgård Ends Up ‘Locked’ in a Car by Anthony Hopkins, and That Goes About as Well as You’d Expect

March 19, 2025

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The Locked guy before he gets Locked (CREDIT: The Avenue)

Starring: Bill Skarsgård, Anthony Hopkins

Director: David Yarovesky

Running Time: 95 Minutes

Rating: R for Road Rage in a Parked Cars

Release Date: March 21, 2025 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Eddie Barrish (Bill Skarsgård) is desperate. Desperate, I say! And I’m pretty sure you’ll be inclined to agree with me if you go see Locked. He’s been trying to get his life back on track for the sake of his young daughter, but that’s a little hard to do when he doesn’t have the cash he needs to pay for his car repairs so that he can go pick her up from school. So he turns to carjacking for a quick score, which turns out so much worse than he ever could have possibly imagined. That’s because the vehicle he targets happens to be owned by a fellow named William (Anthony Hopkins), who’s been a victim of one of too many carjackings himself. So Eddie ends up trapped in the car, with William having rigged it up so that everything is controlled remotely. A simple apology is hardly enough to end this nightmare, and thus a deadly game of very targeted vigilantism commences.

What Made an Impression?: Sociopathic Overload: William is basically the answer to the question, “What if instead of bats, Bruce Wayne was inspired by felines, specifically the way that they mercilessly toy with mice before eating them?” The police were useless to him when he needed them, so now he’s enforcing his own brand of justice. But you get the sense that he’s just been looking for an excuse to behave this way for a very long time. Whenever Eddie pleads with him about how the deck is stacked against guys like him, William just automatically shuts him down and ups the torture. Hopkins is certainly talented enough to make William’s sociopathy entertaining, but it’s more than a little overwhelming when it’s this relentless.
Efficient Mileage: About 75% of Locked takes place in one location, and its cast consists almost entirely of just two guys, one of whom primarily phones in his performance. With a movie like this, you will likely end up with one of two reactions: either “Wow, this is cheap, and it shows,” or “Wow, this is cheap, but they worked around their limitations.” In this case, it’s mostly the latter. The subject matter may be torturous, and the villain may be overcooked, but director David Yarovesky keeps everything locked in gear. All the tightly contained torture may turn a lot of viewers claustrophobic, but it’s possible to appreciate the technical chops even while you’re wincing.

Locked is Recommended If You: Wish That One of the Saw Movies Had Taken Place in a Car

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Vigilantes

Movie Review: ‘Brightburn’ Has Some Chilling Horror Instincts, But It Miscalculates Its Own Stakes

May 23, 2019

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CREDIT: Boris Martin/Sony Pictures

Starring: Jackson A. Dunn, Elizabeth Banks, David Denman, Matt Jones, Meredith Hagner

Director: David Yarovesky

Running Time: 90 Minutes

Rating: R for Alarmingly Gory and Sadistic Violence

Release Date: May 24, 2019

“What if Superman, but evil?” sounds like a pretty slam-dunk pitch for a superhero horror movie, doesn’t it? Brightburn isn’t an official offshoot of the Man of Steel, though it does hew closely enough for me to wonder if any copyright lawyers need to get involved, considering that it’s about a childless couple living on a Kansas farm who adopt a superpowered baby boy who falls from the sky. This isn’t the first story to propose this sort of switcheroo, as the 2003 comic Red Son (in which Superman is raised in the Soviet Union) and the ’70s SNL Uberman sketch (in which he grows up in Nazi Germany) come to mind. But while those examples suggested that a superbeing’s environment is key, Brightburn comes down squarely on the nature side of the Nature vs. Nurture debate.

Brandon Breyer (Jackson A. Dunn) has two loving and devoted parents (Elizabeth Banks and David Denman), but they mean nothing in the face of a spaceship that sends him telepathic messages to conquer Earth. Brightburn is most effective as a horror mashup of slasher and bad seed flicks, as Brandon quickly turns sadistically bloodthirsty as he discovers his abilities. But ultimately, the film is not equipped to work as a subversion of the superhero narrative. Once Brandon’s parents realize his intentions, it is clear that they (along with everybody else) are no match for him. In the desperation to present some sort of counterattack, Elizabeth Banks is required to deliver some pathetic dialogue that nobody could possibly salvage in the face of such an impossible-to-defeat opponent. The balances are all off-scale, and only little stinkers who want to watch the world burn could enjoy the resolution offered here.

Brightburn is Recommended If You Like: Twisted takes on superheroes, Saw, Slashers at their gnarliest

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Laser Eyes