Bryan Bertino is horror’s most unsung auteur—a director whose command of tone, pacing, and unnerving, suggestive visual storytelling is matched by few.
With The Strangers, The Monster, and The Dark and the Wicked, the 47-year-old writer/director has proven himself a skillful genre craftsman, and he revisits many of his favorite tropes and tactics with Vicious.
A claustrophobic thriller about a young woman grappling with a daunting supernatural predicament that’s landed, quite literally, on her doorstep, Bertino’s latest is a sly, sinister film about self-loathing, sacrifice, and the things people will do to survive—with a great tormented performance from Dakota Fanning at its center.
Even if it doesn’t come together at the end, it deserves more than a streaming-only release—although those with a Paramount+ subscription are in for a Halloween treat on Oct. 10.
In a suburban home that she rents from her sister and resides in by herself, Polly (Fanning) moves about cluttered rooms and spaces, Bertino spying her in deep-focus compositions and pans that—like shots of narrow hallways and doorways—imply that the walls are (figuratively) closing in on her.
Rotating this way and that, the director’s camera occasionally appears to be unmoored, and that sense of the world coming undone winds up being apt as Polly navigates her abode, whose plants have shriveled from neglect and whose sink is full of unwashed dishes.
With her fireplace’s logs crackling in the dark, Polly rehearses for an upcoming interview that will hopefully right her wayward course following years of ill-defined trouble. Yet before those preparations are finished, the doorbell rings, thereby prompting a night of gruesome mayhem.
On her porch, Polly greets an elderly woman (Katherine Hunter) who’s confused to find that her former acquaintance no longer lives there. Rather than leave the befuddled stranger out in the snowy cold, Polly welcomes her inside and offers her a glass of water, at which point the little old lady announces, “I’m going to start now” and Vicious takes a turn for the malevolent.
Placing a strange box on the coffee table, out of which she removes an hourglass, the visitor tells Polly that she’s going to die tonight, and that she can’t contact anyone for help. “You have to do things,” she states. Ushered out of the house, she delivers a chilling parting message: “I thought it was a nightmare. But I didn’t wake up. You won’t wake up.”
Polly doesn’t know what to make of this madness, so she calls her mother (Mary McCormack), who comforts her daughter by shrugging off the incident (“It’s probably just some weird cult thing”) and tries to get her to concentrate on her big day tomorrow.
That’s impossible, as Bertino quickly amplifies tension via the first of his multiple expertly executed jump scares. As is his wont, the director exhibits a fondness for both malicious figures materializing behind clueless innocents, and recurring classic songs—in this case, The Mamas & the Papas’ “Dedicated to the One I Love”—playing at unsuspecting times (often on vinyl) to break up the deadly silence.
Throw in the fact that its action hinges on the arrival of a menacing unknown individual, and revolves around a person trapped in a confined setting, and the film boasts virtually all its maker’s hallmarks.
Courtesy of a phone call that eventually goes sideways, Polly learns the nature of her dilemma: She will lose her life unless she puts something she hates, something she needs, and something she loves inside the box. The clock is ticking for her to accomplish this undertaking, which makes no sense, nor does an out-of-the-blue choking fit that concludes with her dropping to her knees and coughing up a brass key.
Rather than deal with this craziness alone, she ventures outside to seek assistance from a neighbor (Klea Scott), who welcomes her inside and gives her tea. Unfortunately, this is a violation of the box’s rules and, unsurprisingly, ends in gory fashion. In the aftermath, Polly is compelled to return home to continue playing the unholy game, complete with additional phone calls that taunt and terrorize.
In a tank top that exposes her scattered arm tattoos, her eyes alight with confusion and panic, Fanning cuts a frazzled and disheveled figure in Vicious, and Bertino puts her through the harrowing paces. Puffing on cigarettes and alternately screaming and weeping, Fanning radiates instability, and she becomes more unhinged as things spiral out of control, beginning with a chat with a dead loved one and continuing with a muffled conversation with an unreliable version of herself.
Mirrors play a constant part in this nightmare, reflecting that which is both real and insincere, and Bertino and cinematographer Tristan Nyby’s stylish framing—from a variety of ominously low and high angles—adds to the material’s suspense.
Head wounds, garden pruners and television broadcasts from the bowels of Hell turn Vicious into a torturous chamber piece, as does the involvement of Polly’s nearby sibling Lainie (Rachel Blanchard) and her young niece Aly (Emily Mitchell), whose fate eventually hangs in the balance.
With Fanning’s distressed turn as its focus, Bertino’s tale is reminiscent of The Twilight Zone episode “Button, Button” and Richard Kelly’s 2009 film The Box (both based on Richard Matheson’s 1970 short story), and yet it goes its own way, escalating with feverish hysteria.
Unfortunately, though, it doesn’t precisely know how to wrap up both its plot and its ideas, concluding on a muddled note that leaves threads unresolved and questions unanswered. Less ambiguous than simply unclear, it’s a mildly deflating finale, no matter that its strong closing image speaks to the idea that transformation, atonement, and salvation are devilishly difficult tasks only achievable through blood.
Despite its late missteps, Vicious is disorienting and disturbing, not to mention formally accomplished; from its use of negative space to create anticipation and dread, to sequences that tease (if don’t necessarily deliver) potential incoming threats, Bertino manipulates masterfully.
Rooted in the irrational but constructed with meticulous care and consideration, his film is a nimble and nasty portrait of letting go of the past, being honest with oneself, and turning over a new leaf—a difficult process that, sometimes, requires offering up a pound of flesh.
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