Publisher: Chris Sawin April 4, 2025
Eddie (Bill Skarsgard) is a freeloader who has exhausted all his options. His van is stuck at the mechanic’s because he doesn’t have enough cash to pay for its repairs. He’s separated from his wife, and it’s his day to pick up his daughter from school. After calling everyone he knows, no one will lend him money because he only calls when he needs something. So Eddie resorts to swiping wallets, buying scratch-offs, and trying to break into cars. Eddie eventually stumbles onto an unlocked luxury SUV. He rummages through its interior and mostly finds nothing only to realize that he’s locked inside. After trashing what he can with his hands and injuring his arm, Eddie stupidly pulls out a gun and discovers that the windows are bulletproof after the ricochet results in a bullet in his leg. With little food or water and no phone reception, Eddie is now at the whim of a madman named William (Anthony Hopkins) who communicates via Bluetooth and gets off on seeing Eddie suffer thanks to the half a dozen cameras installed in the car. In 2019, I saw an Argentinian crime thriller called 4x4 at Fantastic Fest. 4x4 has been remade three separate times since then: a Brazilian remake from 2022 called A Jaula, a Telugu language Indian remake also from 2022 called Dangalunnaru Jaagrathu, and an American remake debuting in 2025 known as Locked. Locked is not a direct remake of 4x4. The concept is the same as the initial struggle of the thief main character getting into the car, getting injured, and turning to desperation such as licking condensation off the windows and drinking his piss for water with a doctor antagonist being in control of the majority of the film. But everything else changes after that. The conflict of 4x4 was always based around the main character being poor with a wealthy captor. 4x4 concludes in a way that seems logical for a car thief protagonist and a doctor who made a car into a torture device. It isn’t a happy ending and it shouldn’t be because neither character has earned it. Both characters get a brief moment in the spotlight, but they also get their comeuppance. Locked essentially molds William into a remote version of John Kramer from the Saw franchise. He kills people for fun, but there’s also a reason why he targets someone like Eddie. The American thriller tries to make you root for Eddie even though he is a gigantic POS before and during his entrapment in the SUV. Eddie wears a gray jacket over a pink hoodie, has bleach blonde hair tips on his darker blonde hair, has an “Anger is a Gift” back tattoo, vapes, and ghosts his daughter regularly. He’s like the Temu version of Pete Davidson and the Wish version of Jesse Pinkman rolled into one douchebag. Williams contradicts himself throughout the film. The character is weirdly polite at first saying phrases like jolly good, old sport, and tough titty with an abhorrence for vulgarity, but then turns around and spews curse words moments later. This may be related to the health condition the character reveals in the film, but with a seemingly endless supply of money, then you’d think the character was more level-headed in his killing and torturing sprees. What made 4x4 interesting was that it revolved around two despicable characters who not only lost all hope of humanity but were also past the point of redemption. There were no heads or tails or yin and yang. They were two sides of the same coin where violence and selfishness consumed their existence. Locked tries to turn Eddie into a hero, but his encounter with William also has an Amanda surviving one of Jigsaw’s traps effect of appreciating his life more and valuing the little things in his life. Apart from starving and dehydrating Eddie, William blasts the AC or turns the heater up to the maximum setting while blaring yodeling or classical music. The seats can also send an electric shock if Eddie curses too much or goes off on a tangent that William doesn’t like. The SUV can be driven remotely, which results in a hellish joy ride around town. Locked isn’t a unique experience if you’ve seen 4x4, but it also goes in unexpected directions. It’s a lot like the Steven Knight-written and directed drama Locke starring Tom Hardy took one of the violently pumping gears out of Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof. Locked nearly ignores what made 4x4 work, but the psychological mess you end up with is still somewhat entertaining.