LOCKED (2025)

Studio:   Paramount Pictures
Director: David Yarovesky
Writer:   Michael Arlen Ross
Producer: Ara Keshishian, Petr Jakl, Sam Raimi, Zainab Azizi, Sean Patrick O’Reilly
Stars:    Bill Skarsgard, Anthony Hopkins

Review Score:

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Summary:

A desperate thief breaks into a luxury SUV and unwittingly enters a cat-and-mouse confrontation with a vengeful man who booby-trapped the vehicle.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

FRIDAY

Desperate for cash to pay shady mechanic Karl for van repairs, and having fallen hopelessly behind on spousal and child support payments, small-time thief Eddie Barrish begins trying various car door handles in a search for valuables. Eddie also takes an angry phone call from his ex-wife Amy, who chews him out for disappointing their young daughter Sarah by failing to pick her up from school.

Eddie finds an unlocked Dolus luxury SUV sitting empty in a parking lot. When he subsequently tries exiting the vehicle, Eddie discovers he is inexplicably locked inside and his cellphone no longer has service.

Eddie badly gouges his arm trying to break out of the reinforced SUV. He also learns the car is soundproof when he fails to get the attention of a passerby through the heavily tinted windows.

The vehicle’s owner, William, calls Eddie through the dashboard console. Able to observe Eddie on cameras in the car, William explains that Eddie fell into a vengeful trap he set after growing angry and frustrated over repeated break-in attempts that the police did nothing about. Whenever Eddie defiantly curses at him, William tazes Eddie with electrified car seats.

Eddie fires a shot from his handgun that ricochets off a bulletproof window and hits him in his leg. Eddie eventually passes out from severe blood loss. When he wakes up later that evening, Eddie discovers his wounds were bandaged, yet he is still trapped inside the vehicle.

SATURDAY

Attempting to explain the motive behind his trap, William continues telling a personal story, but Eddie continues to be indignant. In response to Eddie’s ongoing defiance, William lowers the car’s temperature and begins blasting yodeling music.

Following a full day of discomfort, Eddie finally apologizes for cursing at William. William restores the car’s temperature.

SUNDAY

Through the sunroof, Eddie identifies William as a silhouette observing him from a high balcony on a nearby building. William reveals he will die from cancer in four months, so he wants to see the justice that the legal system won’t give him, which sparks a debate about class and morality between the two men.

In exchange for his name and social security number, William points Eddie to a water bottle he placed beneath the passenger seat. Eddie also gets a snack from the automated glovebox after sincerely apologizing to William for his criminal actions. However, Eddie gets tazed again when William catches him trying to disable electrical circuits beneath the dashboard.

MONDAY

Eddie finally manages to reset the console, allowing him to briefly drive the vehicle before William remotely stops the car. Using autopilot, William sends the SUV to Skid Row and then to a neighborhood of security-heavy homes to illustrate his concept of crime creating a broken society. He then horrifies Eddie by directing the car to violently run down two gang members in an alleyway while Eddie observes helplessly.

TUESDAY

William reveals he contacted Eddie’s ex Amy and daughter Sarah by posing as a debt collector. Further taunting Eddie over a court declaring him to be an unfit father, William sends the car to Sarah’s school where it chases Eddie’s frightened daughter on her scooter. Desperate to save Sarah, Eddie offers his life in exchange for hers. Eddie points his gun at his head and pulls the trigger only to discover William removed the bullets.

Now at the end of his rope, Eddie fights through the pain of electrocution to tear up the inside of William’s car. Anticipating his death, Eddie then records a heartfelt and apologetic message for his daughter.

William physically comes to the car. After forcing Eddie to zip-tie himself to the console, William gets behind the wheel.

On the drive that follows, William explains how his own daughter, Emma, was killed by petty thieves. William goes on to say he wants to hold Eddie accountable for his actions by making him experience “a taste of Hell.”

During their contentious confrontation, Eddie manages to use his toe to disable the car’s electricity. Unable to maintain control, William drives the SUV off a cliff.

WEDNESDAY

With both men severely injured from the crash, Eddie begins violently beating William until he’s interrupted by a phone call from his daughter. Eddie makes a promise to pick up Sarah from school at exactly 2:15pm that afternoon.

William collapses as the car catches fire. Eddie finally breaks through the busted windshield as the vehicle and William’s body go up in flames.

Eddie flags down a passing truck that takes him back to his mechanic, Karl. Realizing the repairs won’t be completed in time, Eddie sells his van to Karl and uses the money to purchase a pink bike he rides to get to Sarah’s school on time. Eddie and Sarah embrace.

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Review:

Single-location thrillers are attractive for cash-conscious filmmakers because they don’t break the bank with extravagant sets, large casts, or expensive special effects. They’re also, apparently, attractive to larger-scale productions like “Locked,” whose opening credits are lengthened by nine different company card animations, and whose end credits cite 35, yes 35, executive producers. I’m used to seeing straight-to-streaming indies load up on long lists of vanity acknowledgments for anyone who opened their checkbook or possibly made one phone call. But three dozen EPs? There ought to be a guild bylaw that requires each person to specify how they contributed to a movie’s creation, because I’m curious to know exactly what these “executives” purportedly “produced.”

First came “Phone Booth,” where Colin Farrell was trapped inside the second half of the title while taunted over the first half of the title by a murderous madman. Then came “Buried,” where Ryan Reynolds was trapped inside a coffin while taunted over the phone by a murderous madman. Now comes “Locked,” where Bill Skarsgard pulls the short straw as the handsome actor to be trapped inside a luxury SUV while taunted over the phone by, you guessed it, a murderous madman.

Bill Skarsgard himself might be likable, but the protagonist he portrays in “Locked” has a harder time earning endearment. A small-time thief, we’re introduced to Eddie as he ignores a phone call from his darling daughter to hustle a shady mechanic over costly van repairs. He does take a call from his angry ex-wife, however, which is where we learn Eddie is a deadbeat dad who most recently disappointed his daughter by failing to pick her up from school like he promised.

Desperate to get his hands on more money, Eddie lifts an unguarded wallet. He could use that cash to pay off late child and spousal support payments. Instead, he buys lotto tickets with the dim-witted hope of scratching off a winner. After shouting unearned obscenities at a man who mistakes him for a vagrant and passes him a couple of bucks, Eddie’s next attempt at taking a lucky shortcut involves trying random car door handles that might open up access to unattended valuables.

Although it’d be preferable if he showed any concern at all for another human being, especially the little one he helped create, I suppose we’re supposed to see a spark of niceness in Eddie since he shares some of his bottled water with a random dog through a car’s cracked window. Except I think the movie doesn’t mean to show Eddie as thoughtful so much as set up why he’s short on H2O once he’s held hostage by a voice over a fortified SUV’s phone.

Eddie only looks like a good guy when compared to his unseen captor, William, a man of means whose bitterness inspired him to teach a common criminal a harsh lesson about exploiting others. Eddie is a dirtbag, a liar, and carries a handgun for no legitimate reason. William, on the other hand, tortures Eddie with electrified car seats, cold interior temperatures, and yodeling blasted at unbearable volumes. Trivial tactics at first, but William’s thirst for hurt eventually escalates into using his vehicle’s autopilot feature to viciously run down two thugs while Eddie observes helplessly.

We have to wait a while for the full explanation behind William’s misguided motivation. Maybe it’s because the movie has to stretch things out to hit feature length. Maybe it’s because Eddie is just an a-hole. But for many of the early moments, Eddie seems more interested in screaming expletive-filled insults at William rather than listening to learn why he’s locked in this car and what he could do to get out.

Who holds the high ground in the standoff between these two men? According to the script’s murky morality, neither of them. Both are different degrees of degenerates, offering eye-rolling assertions and justifications for objectively awful behavior on either side of the equation. William’s wealth allows him to mask his meanness by sipping fine whiskey in his penthouse perch. But being impoverished doesn’t make Eddie a hero.

Having no one worth rooting for turns into a high hurdle for “Locked’s” inability to engage. You wanted Colin Farrell to solve his phone booth conundrum so he could keep innocent lives out of a sniper’s scope. You wanted Ryan Reynolds to escape his coffin in part because he didn’t deserve to be buried alive in the first place. Although he’s in an extreme situation, Bill Skarsgard’s Eddie isn’t a Hitchcockian Everyman caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. He’s a victim of his own actions. Other than basic decency, we’re meant to have strong feelings about his freedom simply so he can pick up his daughter from school for once?

“Locked” puts another obstacle in its way by keeping its co-headliner off the screen for most of the movie. Think of prominent actor pairings in other films. Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in “Heat.” Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal in “When Harry Met Sally.” Now imagine one of them doesn’t show up until only 20 minutes are left in the runtime. Or imagine producers offering Anthony Hopkins a big bag with a dollar sign on it that he eagerly accepted since all he had to do was record lines over a phone and then sit in a car for a few scenes.

Remade from the Argentinian film “4x4,” “Locked’s” reticence to hit hard with a meaningful message, unsympathetic characters, and thinly stretched thrills destine the movie for mediocrity from the scripting stage. Put into production, the film’s unambitious frame assures those low standards aren’t exceeded, driving “Locked” off a cliff into a deep, undesirable chasm of low-impact content.

Review Score: 45

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