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Locked (2025), directed by David Yarovesky and written by Michael Arlen Ross, is a lean, claustrophobic thriller that thrives on the tension between two men who never share the same physical space. A remake of the 2019 Argentine film 4x4, it strips its story to the bare essentials: a man trapped inside a car, a voice in his ear pulling the strings, and an audience forced to share every second of his panic. The premise is deceptively simple, but the execution transforms it into an uneasy meditation on desperation, vengeance, and the lengths people will go when they feel cornered.
At the center of the story is Eddie Barrish, played with raw physicality and emotional depth by Bill Skarsgård. Eddie isn’t an aspiring career criminal or a hardened thug; he’s a man with few options, scraping by as a delivery driver, struggling to care for his daughter Sarah. His immediate need is heartbreakingly mundane—just four hundred dollars to get his van repaired so he can keep working. That small, relatable motive makes his decision to break into a parked luxury SUV not a thrill-seeking crime, but an act of desperation. Unfortunately for Eddie, this particular vehicle is anything but ordinary.
The SUV has been meticulously altered by its owner, William, played—or rather voiced—with eerie precision by Anthony Hopkins. Once Eddie slips inside, he quickly discovers he can’t get out. Locks engage, windows refuse to break, and the car begins to respond to William’s remote control. A chilling realization sets in: Eddie has walked into a carefully designed trap, and William intends to make him suffer. What follows is a two-man psychological duel, with Eddie as the rat in the maze and William as the omnipotent tormentor.
The bulk of the film unfolds inside the car. That confinement could easily have felt stagnant, but Yarovesky finds ways to keep the imagery alive. The camera presses in close on Skarsgård’s face, capturing sweat, panic, and fleeting flickers of resolve. The interiors are shot from shifting angles that make the SUV alternately feel cavernous and suffocating. Sound design becomes a weapon: the hiss of the air conditioner blasting cold, the suffocating rush of hot air, the sudden jolt of electricity, even the disorienting absurdity of loud yodeling piped through the speakers. The car itself becomes a character—oppressive, unpredictable, and alive with menace.
Hopkins, though never seen in person, haunts the film. His calm, measured voice carries a strange civility, like a grandfather lecturing over tea, even as he subjects Eddie to torment after torment. He plays William as a man who believes his cruelty is justice. His daughter was killed in a robbery, and in his grief he has turned his pain outward, deciding to punish others he deems guilty. This twisted sense of purpose, delivered in Hopkins’ trademark blend of charm and menace, makes him all the more unsettling. Like Hannibal Lecter decades before, he doesn’t need to raise his voice to terrify.
If Hopkins is the chilling puppeteer, Skarsgård is the beating heart of the film. Trapped in one location for nearly the entire runtime, he has the burden of carrying the audience’s investment moment by moment. He does so with remarkable range—one minute frantic, pounding on the windows, the next whispering to himself, trying to summon courage. There are moments of raw vulnerability as he talks about his daughter, and others where his animal instinct to survive takes over. It’s a performance that feels both exhausting and magnetic, a testament to Skarsgård’s commitment. Reports from production suggest he spent nearly three weeks filming inside the actual vehicle, enduring simulated heat, cold, and shocks. That authenticity bleeds into the screen.
Thematically, the film tries to place Eddie and William as generational foils. Eddie is broke, hustling to get by in a system that seems designed to fail him. William, older and embittered, believes in a brand of punitive justice rooted in his own trauma. Their clash becomes more than predator and prey; it echoes arguments about class, crime, and who deserves empathy. At times, the message lands bluntly—dialogue spelling out the “lesson” rather than letting it emerge organically. But the moral ambiguity remains effective. Eddie is not innocent, but he is sympathetic. William has been wronged, but his cruelty makes him monstrous. The audience is left to wrestle with the uneasy truth that both men are shaped by desperation, one by poverty and the other by grief.
The film’s momentum comes from escalation. The car becomes more than a prison—it becomes a weapon. At points William drives Eddie against his will, using the vehicle itself as a tool for chaos. The environment becomes a pressure cooker where survival seems increasingly unlikely. Each new twist pushes Eddie further toward the edge, and the audience can’t help but squirm alongside him.
Stylistically, Yarovesky avoids flashy tricks in favor of atmosphere. The palette is stark, the interiors lit to emphasize Eddie’s isolation. The focus remains on performance and sound, with the SUV acting as both set and antagonist. The editing is tight, the runtime brisk at under 100 minutes, making the film feel like an extended panic attack that refuses to relent until the final frame.
Ultimately, Locked is not a film about answers but about endurance. It thrives on its stripped-down conceit, extracting maximum dread from a single space and two powerhouse performances. While its thematic gestures toward social commentary may not always land with nuance, its effectiveness as a thriller is undeniable. Skarsgård gives one of his most grueling and committed performances to date, while Hopkins reminds us how terrifying he can be even with only his voice.
By the time the credits roll, the audience has shared every gasp of air with Eddie, every desperate claw at the door handle, every flinch at William’s detached commands. The story may be contained within the steel frame of an SUV, but its tension reverberates far beyond. Locked is proof that sometimes the smallest stage can hold the biggest battles—between generations, between justice and revenge, and, most viscerally, between survival and surrender.
Locked will be available to own on DVD 8/26!