BY ROGER WATSON
Starring Bill Skarsgård and Anthony Hopkins, Locked (2025) is a comeuppance film where a petty thief and all-round streetwise lowlife suffers for his crimes – one crime in particular – in a fairly horrible way. Skarsgård, or Bill Istvan Günther Skarsgård, has appeared in a few films of note, none of which I have seen and in mainly minor roles.
While I liked his performance here, I am not sure that this one is going to shoot him to stardom. It scores 64% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is probably about right, and is one of those movies that people will either like or hate. I quite liked it; I know my wife would hate it.
Billed as having an ‘all-star’ cast, it doesn’t. There’s only Bill, Anthony Hopkins and a few extras. Bill’s girlfriend is played by someone, and they have a sweet young daughter played by Ashley Cartwright. In an all-too-familiar storyline, Eddie (Skarsgård’s character) strives to be a great dad. He loves his daughter and is always in trouble with his girlfriend for letting them down by not collecting her from school.
Eddie wanders the streets of an anonymous American city – the film was shot in Vancouver – looking for opportunities to steal whatever anyone is careless enough to take their eyes off. He checks car doors and if they are open, relieves the owners of anything valuable left in them.
He is constantly on his phone making excuses to his girlfriend about being unable to collect their daughter. This scene-setting constitutes the first five to ten minutes of the film until he spies a top-of-the-range SUV in a relatively empty car park. He sidles over nonchalantly to try the doors. They are unlocked. He cannot believe his luck and jumps in to rifle through the glove compartment and door pockets.
There is nothing worth stealing, and this is when the fun begins. He tries to leave the car but is unable to open the doors. He begins to panic. A well-known voice, that of Anthony Hopkins, comes over the speakers. The car has been locked remotely and Hopkins’ character, William, is watching him and is preparing to have some fun.
Hopkins exemplifies the adage that old actors never die, but they do recycle their lines. The phrase ‘old sport’, much used by characters previously played by Hopkins, is used frequently. Hopkins, in Silence of The Lambs mode, plays a very cruel character indeed.
Eddie carries a gun with which he tries to shoot his way out of the car. Inevitably, the windows are bulletproof, a ricochet embeds itself in his calf muscle and he begins to bleed profusely and passes out. Waking up, still alone in the car, he finds that he has been expertly bandaged by William, who explains over the speaker that he is a doctor. He is not quite ready to kill Eddie yet.
The bulk of the film is taken up with various tortures that William can impose on Eddie in the car. Eddie is alternately rewarded and punished for his attitude towards William. Initially unrepentant, he is punished with severe electric pulses through the car, with prolonged loud music and air-conditioning turned down to refrigeration level or up to a tropical heat.
He is rewarded by being told where to find a bottle of water or a bar of chocolate. Extremely dehydrated, he considers drinking his own urine, which he collected in the empty water bottle. Conditions in the car drive him to repentance and apology.
The car suddenly starts and, being driven remotely and insanely, Eddie is taken on a terrifying drive around the city by William until the car comes to a halt next to another parked car in a remote waterside area. William emerges from the other car carrying a bag of tools with a saw protruding from it. Placing the tools in the back seats, he takes to the driver’s seat of the SUV, all the time keeping a gun trained on Eddie. Eddie is made to handcuff himself to a bar on the passenger side.
William drives off and during the journey he continues to torture Eddie. Pistol-whipping and sharp braking episodes mean that Eddie’s face is gradually becoming a swollen, bleeding mess. But the end is nigh. Does Eddie survive? Does he kill William? Do they both perish? Over to you. It’s worth a watch.
Roger Watson is a Registered Nurse and Editor-in-Chief of Nurse Education in Practice.