There’s something perversely comforting about a film like Locked. Not because it’s good—let’s be clear, it’s mostly not—but because it plays like a relic from a time when you could throw a mid-tier actor into a box, add a gimmick, and call it a thriller. That’s exactly what Locked is: a claustrophobic morality play with all the nuance of a bootleg Saw trap and the political insight of a Reddit thread about millennials ruining society.

David Yarovesky’s directorial résumé reads like a dude who really wants to prove he’s got a wild streak. He made Brightburn, a bleak little twist on superhero mythology that asked, “What if Superman was a sociopathic 12-year-old?” It was a strong swing if not a fully satisfying hit, with stylish gore and tone but not a ton of narrative depth. His Netflix flick Nightbooks showed off his visual flair again, but for all the potential, Yarovesky still hasn’t made a film that proves he knows what to do with substance. Locked doesn’t fix that.

What’s clear is Yarovesky wanted to do something lean and mean, a return to low-budget, mid-concept thrillers. But what we get is a film that never trusts its premise enough to commit and fumbles the very ideas it pretends to wrestle with.

Locked is a remake of the Argentine thriller 4×4, a movie with a deceptively simple pitch: guy breaks into a car, gets trapped, and slowly unravels. In the remake, Bill Skarsgård plays Eddie Barrish, a broke dad and petty thief who tries to loot a luxury SUV and ends up locked inside by its vindictive owner William, a cancer-ridden billionaire played (voiced, mostly) by Anthony Hopkins.

Eddie quickly realizes the SUV is a luxury prison—bulletproof glass, no cell signal, taser seats, and some darkly comic Muzak torture on loop. William monologues through the dash display like a Bond villain on LinkedIn, explaining that he’s turning his grief into DIY vigilante justice. Eddie is a proxy for “those people”—the have-nots who dare trespass on the sanctified property of the rich.

And that’s the whole film: one guy locked in a car, one voice taunting him like a deranged Uber driver, and some vaguely sociopolitical spice sprinkled over a bowl of narrative instant noodles.

Screenwriter Michael Arlen Ross (Turistas, because of course) does his damnedest to craft a parable about class, grief, and vengeance, but the result is so sanitized and streamlined that it barely registers. Eddie’s character is softened with cheap sympathy tactics—he gives water to a stray dog, he talks lovingly to his daughter, he’s not really a bad guy. Meanwhile, William is basically a Facebook comment section in human form: all bile and bootstraps, whining about how young people don’t work hard anymore and how criminals deserve to die for $400 worth of damage​.

The dialogue swings from ham-fisted political sermonizing to psychopathic cosplay. At one point, William literally rants about the word “triggered” while stalking a child with his self-driving car. Subtlety died for this movie, and I don’t think anyone on the production noticed.

Symbolically, the car is a microcosm of America: comfortable, locked down, owned by the rich, and absolutely rigged. But the film lacks the teeth to really chew on its ideas. It keeps yanking the wheel back to familiar territory—poor man suffers, rich man gloats—without ever driving the narrative anywhere new. It flirts with satire, then backs off like it forgot its safe word.

Visually, Locked does its job. The production team makes the most of a confined space. The lighting is effective, the use of reflections and raindrops to simulate sweat and tears is a nice touch (even if it feels like a nod to In Cold Blood), and the few moments outside the car give just enough variety to avoid full-on cabin fever​.

Tim Williams‘ score is pulsing and anxious in all the right ways. Editors Andrew Buckland and Peter Gvozdas do a commendable job maintaining tension, even when the story stalls like an overheated engine. There’s some impressive technical work buried here, which makes the shallowness of the script all the more frustrating.

Skarsgård is the main draw, and he mostly delivers. There’s real desperation in his performance, and he manages to make Eddie’s journey—however thinly written—feel visceral. Still, his character arc is less “transformation” and more “guy sweats for 90 minutes and finally snaps.” If you’re here to see Bill panic and cry and look hot doing it, congrats, you’re in for a treat.

Hopkins, meanwhile, could have filmed his performance while waiting for tea to steep. He’s having fun, sure, but there’s zero subtlety to William. He’s a boomer boogeyman with a Bluetooth headset and a moral superiority complex, not a compelling character.

Locked wants to be smart, savage, and stylish, but it’s only got the latter in spades. It’s a film that thinks it’s making a statement when it’s really just reiterating that rich people suck and sometimes they suck hard. And while I agree with that sentiment—deeply—it’s not enough to carry a whole movie.

The remake strips 4×4 of its moral ambiguity and replaces it with safe clichés, weakening both its message and its menace. The violence is occasionally shocking, the setting is solid, but the politics are about as sharp as a melted butter knife​.

TL;DR: Locked is Phone Booth meets Saw for the age of NextDoor paranoia, a socio-political thriller that spends too much time telling you what it means and not enough showing you why it matters.

Recommended if: You think Death Wish needed fewer guns and more Bluetooth torture.
Not recommended if: You’ve ever yelled “eat the rich” and actually meant it.