Entertainment
Bill Skarsgård Does His Best Pete Davidson In R-Rated Saw Style Thriller
By Robert Scucci
| Published
What do you get when you combine Pete Davidson, Anthony Hopkins, a smart car capable of locking in and torturing anybody who dares break into it, and the kind of battle of the wits that was popularized by the first Saw movie? If your guess was 2025’s Locked, you’d be mostly correct, except that there is no Pete Davidson. It’s Bill Skarsgard, covered in tattoos, with bleached-blond hair and a pink hoodie. I knew it was Bill Skarsgård the whole time, but I kept seeing Pete Davidson, like he was originally cast and got swapped out at the last minute.
Oddly enough, Glenn Powell was supposed to take on the lead role for Locked, but he couldn’t commit due to scheduling conflicts, probably because he had to star in another legacy sequel or something.
Identity confusion aside, Locked is a pretty straightforward thriller, and right up your alley if you’re into moral dilemmas, sadistic antagonists with total control, and one of the most irredeemable main characters you still have to root for. At the same time, you kind of hope he gets at least a little maimed along the way because he doesn’t seem capable of learning a valuable lesson.
It’s Basically Saw In A Car With No Torture Or Likeable People
The entire premise for Locked plays like a Saw movie, but not nearly as interesting. Eddie Barrish (Bill Skarsgård doing his best Pete Davidson) is a former (read: still active) criminal and deadbeat father. He doesn’t pay child support, and he always forgets to pick up his daughter Sarah (Ashley Cartwright) from school in the dangerous part of town. When he’s not trying to sell scrap at the auto shop and blow what little money he has on scratch-off tickets, he breaks into cars for walking-around money.
He breaks into the wrong car on this day, a heavily tinted and suspiciously placed Dolus SUV, and his life takes a turn for the worse when the vehicle locks him inside, making it clear that this was exactly what it was designed to do. He receives a phone call from the car’s owner, William (Anthony Hopkins), who explains that after a series of break-ins, he’s decided to take matters into his own hands by turning his car into a rolling torture box. The seats are electrified, and William can control every other feature in the car, like the heat, air conditioning, radio, and even the engine and steering wheel.
The SUV is also soundproofed, with heavily tinted windows, meaning nobody can hear Eddie scream or see inside, despite the fact that it’s parked in a busy lot. The remainder of the film becomes a claustrophobic test of wills as Eddie and William get to know each other. William reveals that he’s a terminally ill doctor, and this is his twisted version of vigilante justice. Eddie initially resists William’s demands to divulge personal information that could ruin his life, but eventually caves when faced with the car’s heat and William blasting yodeling music for hours on end.
In a desperate search for a blind spot in William’s cameras, or a way to short-circuit the car, Eddie uses his street smarts to outmaneuver his captor. The problem is that William has thought through every angle, leaving Eddie with very few options and almost no room for error.
We Have Saw At Home
There’s no way to talk about Locked without bringing up the Saw movies. Here, we have a bad guy in the sense that he’s a petty criminal squandering his life while his daughter actually needs him. He makes no effort to improve his situation, which is exactly how he ends up in William’s car. William is the menacing antagonist whose entire M.O. mirrors Jigsaw from the first Saw film. So we’re not even talking about a deep cut, we’re talking about the core premise of a massive horror franchise, just done in a car, and with its thermostat being the most elaborate booby trap.
Bill Skarsgård and Anthony Hopkins play well off each other, even though it looks like whoever handled the wardrobe really wanted Skarsgård to resemble Pete Davidson. Their adversarial dynamic has a strong ebb and flow, especially when Eddie thinks he has the upper hand, only for William to already be 10 steps ahead. From a production, cinematography, film score, and sound design standpoint, Locked is beyond solid. The problem is that the premise has been done to death.
By the time Eddie gets shocked by the car seats for the fourth time, you start to wonder if anything new is going to happen, or if it’s just going to be a guy trapped in a car, grunting uncomfortably the whole time. If I wanted that experience, I would have kept the family hatchback instead of upgrading to an SUV so I could live it every day. Boring.
That said, Locked isn’t a terrible film. It’s just not an original one. If you’re not a horror junkie and are only vaguely familiar with the Saw movies by name, I could see this being a solid watch. But since it’s been done before, and better, I mostly felt underwhelmed despite the strong performances across the board.
As of this writing, Locked is streaming on Hulu.
Entertainment
The Star Trek Sex Scene That Was Almost Too Much For Audiences
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
If there’s one thing Star Trek has always been weird about, it’s sex. Sure, The Original Series liked to titillate audiences, but broadcast restrictions kept them from getting too spicy. The Next Generation was comparatively celibate, to the point that Patrick Stewart would beg new writers to get Captain Picard laid. Eventually, the pendulum swung the other way: Discovery gave us an explicit sex scene that traumatized an unwilling participant while traumatizing the audience with the sight of naked Klingon breasts.
Obviously, it’s hard for this franchise to get sex scenes just right. When they aren’t offensive, they’re just downright goofy, like the time Dr. Crusher boned down with the Scottish bad boy that lived in her mother’s sex toy candle. Understandably, Star Trek: The Next Generation showrunner Michael Piller was worried about how audiences would react to a sex scene with Deanna Troi in “The Price” because fans kept writing in complaints before the episode even aired. But he didn’t get a single complaint after the episode, proving that audiences secretly loved seeing everyone’s favorite Betazed getting shagged!
In “The Price,” the Enterprise is hosting a number of intergalactic dignitaries who are negotiating for the rights to a major prize: access to a seemingly stable wormhole from the Alpha Quadrant to the Gamma Quadrant. One of the negotiators is secretly empathic, so it’s no surprise when he hits it off with empathic Counselor Deanna Troi. The two form a hot and heavy sexual relationship, one that only comes to an end when Troi must reluctantly reveal how her new lover has been secretly using his own Betazed abilities to manipulate negotiations from the beginning.
When previews for “The Price” first aired, the fandom collectively decided they were going to hate the scene where Troi takes Ral (her new bad-boy boyfriend) to bed. There are many possible reasons for this. Some fans hated to see Troi hook up with anyone but Riker, her fellow officer and one true Imzadi. Meanwhile, some fans hated to see Troi hook up with anyone but themselves. Whatever their motivation, more than a few fans decided to write to the Star Trek: The Next Generation crew to complain about the impending onscreen erotica.
“I’m Sensing Great Thickness, Captain”
This information comes to us courtesy of Michael Piller. As written in Captains’ Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, the TNG showrunner later lamented that “It was never meant to be outrageous television.” Despite this, “We got quite a few letters from outraged people before it aired.” Obviously, these fans thought Star Trek was about to get downright salacious. However, this story has an unexpected punchline: Piller noted that “nobody wrote after it aired.” The implication here is that nobody, even the fans who thought they would despise it, actually hated this sci-fi sex scene.
By today’s standards, the sex scene is relatively mild. There isn’t any nudity or simulated sex onscreen, and the whole thing was more sensual than anything else. Ral gives her a hot oil foot massage, she ends up straddling him, and the two spend plenty of time baring their souls while staring into each other’s eyes. Sure, it’s not as explicit as something you might find over on GornHub (what are you doing, step-reptile?!?), but by the standards of early ‘90s TV, this scene was downright smoking.
Judging from the complete and utter lack of complaints, it seems like the fandom really enjoyed this sensual scene. The franchise might have had trouble getting things just right over the years, but it seems like the TNG writers and producers finally found the right recipe for a successful Star Trek sex scene. Just take half a cup of foot stuff, eight ounces of diaphonous clothing, and three cloves of Marina Sirtis on top. Throw in a spandex-clad exercise scene as an appetizer and baby, you’ve got yourself one hell of a meal!
Entertainment
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Entertainment
Mads Mikkelsen Steals Dogs and Jumps Out of Moving Cars in Unrated New Black Comedy
By Chris Sawin
| Published
The Last Viking has an opening and an ending that feels like a hand-painted fairy tale revolving around a Viking clan where everyone remains equal; young and old, fat and skinny, ugly or beautiful – everyone is treated the same. But one day, during a battle, a young Viking loses one of his arms.
In comparison to everyone else, he feels ugly and less than everyone else. His father, the chieftain, witnessed this and ordered every male in the clan, toddler, adult, or elderly, and everything in between, to chop off one of their arms. Part of it was to help his son feel better, but it was also to keep the clan equal among themselves.
In the present day, Anker (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) has just committed robbery and murdered someone in the process. He takes a duffel bag full of money and locks it in a locker. He instructs his brother, Manfred (Mads Mikkelsen), to swallow the key and retrieve the bag only once everything has died down. He then gives Manfred specific instructions to bury the bag in a designated place near their mother’s house.
Anker is sentenced to 15 years in prison. Once he gets out, Manfred refers to himself as John W. Lennon and has no memory of where he buried the loot. As Manfred is going through something irregular, Anker is forced to help him in some capacity so he can be well enough to remember where the money is.
Life After The Heist
Written and directed by Anders Thomas Jensen (Riders of Justice, Men and Chicken), The Last Viking is a crime drama with some dark comedy thrown in for good measure. Manfred flips out whenever someone still calls him Manfred. He’s been stealing the neighbor’s dogs and stabbing their sister, Freja (Bodil Jorgensen), in the thigh because she didn’t call him John. Manfred also likes to jump out of moving cars, and he threatens to kill himself by shoving a fondue fork in his head. Both he and Anker have terrible tempers, as well.
The film follows Anker as he tries to shake some sense into Manfred. He wants his money so he can get away from his brother forever. Manfred has experienced some sort of severe trauma that has resulted in him having dissociative identity disorder. While we all exist as one identity in one reality, Manfred has several personalities that exist in different realities. They find this out after Manfred is committed to a psych ward.
Manfred’s psychologist, Lothar (Lars Brygmann), who is obsessed with IKEA, believes that, since Manfred believes he is one of The Beatles, he needs to unite with others who share his condition and believe they are the other Beatles. Once united, they can play Beatles songs together and, hopefully, regain some sense of normalcy.
Lothar tracks down a mute who believes he’s Ringo and Anton (Peter During), who has more than 40 personalities, including Bjorn from ABBA, Heinrich Himmler, and Paul McCartney and George Harrison. Anker and Manfred’s mother’s house is now owned by a couple who rent it out as an Airbnb; a former hand model named Margrethe (Sofie Grabol) and her much older husband, Werner (Soren Malling). Werner has been trying to write and illustrate a children’s book for the past five years, but has never finished it.
Lastly, there’s Flemming (Nicolas Bro), the flat owner and maintenance man to the flat Anker, Manfred, and Freja live in. Flemming wants all of the money that Anker has been hiding. He was paid before Anker went to prison, but he spent it all and now wants whatever is left. He basically hunts Anker the entire film and has a nasty streak despite his calm demeanor.
Drama And Trauma With A Side Of Humor
Anders Thomas Jensen makes this eclectic cast of characters feel necessary in the grand scheme of things. The Last Viking may centrally be about Anker and Manfred, but the way the story incorporates everyone else is extraordinary. There is humor in the film, but the drama and trauma keep your interest. Why Manfred decided to change his name and why Anker can’t remember certain things about his past is explained, and it’s devastating.
There’s a broken mentality to every character in the film, but the concept of either feeling less broken or being a bit more whole as a group is explored in The Last Viking. Every question you might have, like how the film’s title factors into the story, is explored to meaningful satisfaction. The one issue is that I wish the humor hit harder. For a film that is so serious, the comedy is extremely subtle and lighthearted. Maybe devoting more of the film to humor would have taken away from the overall story, which is already so well-connected and has a solid conclusion.
The Last Viking is stupidly sentimental and surprisingly sweet. It’s a film about a bunch of individuals who are completely and totally dysfunctional on their own but somewhat functional together.
The Last Viking hits theaters and digital/on-demand on May 29.
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