History Film / Thoroughbreds

* SymbolicSereneSubmersion: Lily and Amanda play a game to see who can hold their breath longest underwater. Lily holds hers for an extremely long time, and Amanda gets concerned and swims down to pull Lily up, which is symbolic of Lily's growing murderous feelings for [[spoiler:her stepfather]] and foreshadowing that [[spoiler:while Lily will eventually commit the murder, Amanda is the one who takes the fall for it, almost gladly.]]

* HairContrastDuo: Amanda has reddish light-brown QuirkyCurls. Lily has long, straight black hair.

* SociopathicHero: Amanda clearly suffers from some kind of antisocial psychological disorder but is the more sympathetic of the two girls.

* ApologeticAttacker: A mixed version. [[spoiler: Lily regrets trying to drug Amanda and warns her, but Amanda still drinks the drugged screwdriver and Lily still goes through with the murder. She later cries and holds an unconscious Amanda for comfort.]]

** ''Mark''. While he mostly refrains from physical abuse to Lilly, he's so rude, nasty, and aggressive that it seems unlikely anyone will feel any sympathy for him [[spoiler:even after Lily kills him.]]

* BleedEmAndWeep: Lily cries after [[spoiler: murdering Mark, and holds an unconscious Amanda for comfort.]]

* ChekhovsGun: [[spoiler:Regarding to the sword in Mark's office... completely subverted!]]

* HourglassPlot: Former best friends Lily and Amanda. Lily is an apparently extremely empathic and kind, albeit image-conscious, teenage girl who is thrown into a tailspin when her bullying stepfather Mark plans to send her away to a bad boarding-school. Amanda is a resolute underachiever and a sociopath with a bad reputation and no feelings who is awaiting trial for animal cruelty. However, as the film progresses, Amanda learns that Lily is far from perfect - she got thrown out of school for plagiarism and is lying about her prestigious internship. [[spoiler:While Amanda is guilty of animal cruelty, it actually resulted from a botched attempt to euthanize her horse. Finally, Lily tells Amanda that she doesn't think her life is worth living since she doesn't have emotions, roofies her, and then brutally murders Mark and frames her for it. Lily also gets away with everything and inherits Mark's vast fortune, but emerges from the experience icy-cold. Amanda, meanwhile, goes to a psychiatric hospital where she genuinely enjoys herself and is shown reminiscing with genuine happiness about her and Lily's past as kids.]]

* KarmaHoudini: [[spoiler:Lily stabs Mark to death at the end of the movie and frames Amanda for it (although Amanda gives her permission to frame her.)]]

* MoralSociopathy: Amanda. She doesn't feel anything -- not guilt, fear, happiness, sadness, or even anger. However, she says that she can still be a good person, she just has to work harder at it than most. She's still perfectly willing to kill Mark, but says it's because he does more bad than good; the way she sees it, human life isn't inherently sacred, and some people are better off dead. She also claims she only killed her horse because he was in pain and going to die anyway, and her mother refused to take him to the vet to have him put down. She also tried to do it quickly and painlessly, though it didn't work out that way. She's never cruel just for the sake of it, [[spoiler:and willingly takes the fall for Lily in the end]], so she ''does'' seem to follow a code. Her code is just [[BlueAndOrangeMorality different.]]

* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: [[spoiler:Tim bails on the plan to murder Mark at the first opportunity, knowing the girls can't report him. Amanda and Lily decide to cut their losses and let him go]].

** Lily herself is a highly dramatic version. She responds extremely - and violently - if Mark ever threatens to blow her perfect façade.

* TamperingWithFoodAndDrink: [[spoiler: Lily spikes Amanda's vodka screwdriver with roofies in order to act out the plan seen in TakingTheHeat. Amanda chugs the drink and tells her to go for it.]]

* WasItAllALie: Upon finding out Amanda literally cannot feel, Lily understandably wonders this about their whole friendship. Amanda seems to like her as much as she is able, but [[spoiler:admits she faked crying at Lily's dad's funeral.]]

** Perhaps more disturbingly, Lily and Mark. [[spoiler:Mark is a total asshole and obsessive ControlFreak who gets close to threatening Lily with violence on one occasion. However, Lily herself shows that she can be extremely violent towards Mark when he threatens to dismantle her perfect life, which is symbolically represented by her taking his car after she kills him and gets away with it.]]

* KarmaHoudini: [[spoiler:Lily stabs Mark to death at the end of the movie and frames Amanda for it (although Amanda gives her permission to frame her.)]]

* KarmaHoudini: [[spoiler:Lily. She gets everything she wanted.]]

** ''Mark''. While he isn't physically abusive to Lilly, he's so rude, nasty, and aggressive that it seems unlikely anyone will feel any sympathy for him [[spoiler:even after Lily kills him.]]

* AbusiveParents: While Mark never gets physically violent, he displays some blatant emotionally abusive behavior towards Lily, insulting and belittling her at every opportunity.

* TheAggressiveDrugDealer: Tim is a wannabe drug dealer with delusions of grandeur. He only sells to children, and agressively tries to push his merch at a teen party even after being asked to leave by the guests.

* AmbiguousDisorder: Amanda doesn't feel any emotions ever due to an unspecified disorder, though ''why'' she doesn't is never explained. According to her, her therapist actually keeps changing the diagnosis, most recently going from Boderline Personality Disoder to Severe Depression to Anti Social with Schizoid Tendencies.