What would you do to right a wrong? What wrong would you do to make something right? Where is the line by which a good person becomes bad and what rationale do they provide to defend themselves? In truth, from a psychological perspective, individuals will come up with any kind of justification for actions, benevolent or malicious, as long as it aligns with their sense of self, the foundation by which a person sees who they are. This is how self-proclaimed “good folks” can do terrible things because, in their view, they are “good” and any claims otherwise are hokum. This is a critical element of the latest David Yarovesky (Brightburn) thriller, the escape room tale Locked, now out on DVD, whose intense performances are undercut by shallow philosophy.
Bill Skarsgård as Eddie in LOCKED. Photo courtesy of The Avenue.
Unable to finish paying for the necessary repairs to get his van fixed and out of other options, Eddie (Bill Skarsgård) resorts to theft to make up the cash so that he can not only get the vehicle back to return to his delivery job, but to be able to pick up his daughter Sarah (Ashley Cartwright) from school. Coming across a high-end SUV, he initially sees himself as lucky when the driver’s door opens after a single pull of the handle, until, once inside, the doors lock and stop responding to him. Trapped, Eddie finds himself at the mercy of William (Anthony Hopkins), a voice on the other end of the car’s phone who has nothing less than malevolent intentions.
Bill Skarsgård as Eddie in LOCKED. Photo courtesy of The Avenue.
Locked is an adaptation by Yarovesky and screenwriter Michael Arlen Ross (Fallen) of the 2019 crime thriller 4×4 written by Mariano Cohn (Official Competition) and Gastón Duprat (Official Competition). Having not seen the original tale, the following review will not provide a comparison. Additionally, the following review is based on a DVD retail copy provided by Alliance Entertainment.
In the same way that Law Abiding Citizen (2009) sought to make a villain out of Gerard Butler’s Clyde (dude was shortchanged by his lawyer), Locked seeks to make William into a righteous villain and the film collapses as a result. From William, we learn that his vehicle has been stolen six times prior to this and the cops did nothing to discover who did it. This sets up the logic for William that the next person who messes with his car is due a comeuppance that he will deliver. In contrast, Eddie is set up to be a person in a tough situation that puts him at the wrong place at the wrong time. Before getting to William’s car, we’re shown Eddie attempting to access a different car, one that ends up having a dog locked inside of it. Eddie gives the dog water to drink to give it some relief from the hot locked vehicle. Once gaining entry to Williams’ car, Eddie doesn’t try to steal the car, seemingly setting this apart from the previous six incidents. Instead, Eddie looks for things of value and then tries to get out. Trapping Eddie demonstrates that William would have put anyone who entered that vehicle into this predicament, no matter the reason. In William’s eyes, any criminal is beneath him and is worthy of punishment. This, of course, creates the opportunities for the two to debate justice, ethics, Marxism, and the merits of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, further pointing out that William is not some avatar of justice, but a blade of revenge. This may be Ross’s way of trying to illustrate that Eddie is more than the sum of his parts, a way to cast off the audience’s perception that he’s little more than a deadbeat dad who can’t make child-support payments, can’t pick up his daughter, and any other judgement we might cast upon him do to costuming and characterization. In truth, all this sequence does is cement that William is rage fueled by a superiority complex, with his presumed class and cancerous death sentence giving him permission to inflict pain. From this, the whole of Locked, escape room tale as it is, comes off less as a battle of ethics and more as class warfare in which the poor are the playthings of the rich. Too little reason is given for Eddie to be deserving of the brutality William exerts upon him — starving him of food and drink, psychologically torturing him with music and temperature, and making him bear witness to both attempted and successful vehicular manslaughter events. Perhaps worse, William is entirely reduced because there’s nothing in the film that suggests he possesses the skill set necessary for the trap constructed (see: Jigsaw), but weaponizes the work of others and calls it his own. William probably came up with the vehicle label, the phrase “Dolus,” and called himself clever as it’s a Latin phrase referring to deceit, fraud, or bad faith. The last one being a truism as Eddie doesn’t technically break into the car as it was unlocked, meaning that he did little more than look around before William activated the trap.
Bill Skarsgård as Eddie in LOCKED. Photo courtesy of The Avenue.
All of these things bring down an otherwise engaging thriller as the bulk of the film is Skarsgård (It) playing off Hopkins’s (The Silence of the Lambs) voice. Both talented actors engaging the material with a robust honesty that may inspire viewers to overlook the various cracks coursing through the script. Certainly, both actors make the most of the dialogue, all of which comes off natural for their respective characters, including when it drips with intended inauthenticity — Eddie with his sarcasm and frustration at the immoral power dynamic; William with his dry humor and anger at Eddie’s presumed inferiority. Even Michael Dallatorre’s (Brightburn; Studio 666) cinematography impresses with a continuous oner when Eddie first gets into the vehicle, the camera spinning around him to give the audience a 3600 view of the space. Not only that, but Dallatorre’s presentation of the deceptively fortified vehicle infuses a persistent dread as the world around Eddie changes while he’s trapped, unable to call out using telecommunications or to anyone nearby.
Bill Skarsgård as Eddie in LOCKED. Photo courtesy of The Avenue.
With zero bonus features on the DVD, just subtitle and scene options, there’s no way to know what the intention of the film is from the perspective of the filmmakers. Skarsgård and Hopkins have careers marked by bold choices, dipping their toes in populist fare while remaining free to explore the strange and unusual. It would have been nice to learn what drew them to this project and heard them discuss aspects that we may or may not have picked up on in order to better understand why any of the cast or crew felt this was a story worth exploring. Or, if they saw this, why they felt it’s a story worth telling. In the grand scheme of revenge stories, Locked is indistinct because its villain is disinterested in specific action. Only interested in the application of agony on a presumed-feeble individual, it wildly flails to cause pain via mayhem and struggles to uphold its philosophical center by positioning William so distinctly in the wrong that morality disappears in the face of a clear classist manifesto.
No bonus features included with the DVD release.
In select theaters March 21st, 2025.
Available on VOD and digital April 22nd, 2025.
Available on DVD August 26th, 2025.
For more information, head to the official Paramount Pictures Locked webpage.
Final Score: 2 out of 5.
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Categories: Home Video, Reviews, streaming
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