Hell of a Summer/Locked

Locked is an English language remake of the 2019 Argentinean film 4×4, and although it came and went on local screens without making much noise, it’s worthy of a watch for several reasons.

Eddie (Bill Skarsgård) has fallen on hard times and doesn’t have enough money to repair his car to pick up his daughter from school. Desperate not to disappoint his child again, he buys lottery tickets, begs friends for a loan, and when this doesn’t work, he breaks into an SUV looking for something to steal that he can pawn for money. But once he gets into the car (a “Dolus”), the doors lock and he can’t get out. The doors and windows are reinforced and soundproof. Cell service won’t work. And he finds, to his cost, that the windows are bulletproof, too. 

Then he gets a phone call from the car’s owner, William (Anthony Hopkins). William has built this car into a trap, frustrated after the car had been broken into seven previous times. He thinks of tormenting Eddie as justice to answer his frustrations. To that end, he electrifies him via tasers built into the seats, torments him with yodeling music, freezes or blasts him with heat, not to mention slowly killing him via thirst and starvation. But Eddie is resilient and will do anything to see his daughter again, as the war of wills moves toward its lethal conclusion.

Skarsgård gets almost all of the screen time, and he makes the most of it, cursing and struggling and suffering, taking an initially unappealing character and ultimately making him sympathetic. You feel for him, and one shot in which it’s raining outside, and Eddie has his face up against the sunroof glass but can’t get a drop to slake his thirst is quite affecting. Hopkins brings some amusement to his mostly vocal role, but mainly William is unmoved by pity and motivated by sadism – the vengeance of a rich guy who has snapped.

Director David Yarovesky manages the impressive feat of keeping the movie visually compelling despite the action being confined inside the vehicle, working with cinematographer Michael Dallatorre to somehow create circling shots around Skarsgård. Michael Arlen Ross’s screenplay (based on the source material of the original film’s script by Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat) is clever and compelling. It’s smart (“Dolus” means deceit or device in Latin), well-structured (early on Eddie gives water to a dog waiting inside a parked car), suspenseful (a scene involving a threat to Eddie’s daughter is intense) and even has a message – you can’t have justice without morality. 

Locked was a pleasant surprise to me, an expertly concocted thriller that finds terror in the seemingly mundane.

Hell of a Summer is an amiable goof of a movie, a comedy which uses the tropes of a classic slasher flick without any attempt to actually be scary. If met on its low-key level, however, the film is moderately amusing.

Jason (Fred Hechinger) is returning to his summer counselor job at his beloved Camp Pineway for his sixth season. At 24, he’s a bit old for the job, and his mother would rather he became a lawyer. He’s there early for a camp counselor weekend prior to the arrival of the summer camp kids and is surprised to find a note from the camp owners saying they’ll be gone for a couple of days. He’s saddened when one of the other counselors, Bobby (Billy Bryk), claims to not remember him. Other counselors arrive, including Claire (Abby Quinn), who at least is civil to Jason, and Demi (Pardis Saremi), who’s preoccupied by posting TikTok videos. All goes normally until the counselors begin being murdered by a figure in a devil mask, and they all must try and band together to survive.

Hechinger is charming as the well-meaning Jason, providing the audience with someone to root for amid the largely self-interested counselors. Quinn excels as his smarter friend, Claire, seeming like the only clear-headed person in the story. Bryk steals the show as Bobby, resplendent in his pukka shell necklace, with a very funny performance as a guy so shallow that’s he’s upset that the killer hasn’t targeted him because he thinks he’s not good looking enough. Saremi scores as the pretty mean girl who really wants to be a social influencer.

Director/co-writers Bryk and Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things) use darkness well but don’t capitalize on that atmosphere to create suspense, which is a bit disappointing. However, the movie is clearly focusing on its comedy, which largely succeeds. Lines such as this answer to a description of Bobby as an asshole – “No, no, he just looks and acts like one.” – or accepted wisdom amid the murder spree – “Single-use plastics are the real killers.” – create an off-kilter humorous atmosphere. 

Hell of a Summer isn’t a must-see, but it might be fun for a late-night comedic viewing.