Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Bryan Bertino
Starring: Dakota Fanning, Kathryn Hunter, Mary McCormack, Rachel Blanchard, Devyn Nekoda, Klea Scott, Emily Mitchell
I jumped with fright more times during Vicious than any other horror movie I've seen this year. Not because it's actually scary mind, but simply because it features the loudest vibrating cellphone in the history of sound mixing. Even my cat leaped from the couch at one point, and she would sleep through an earthquake. There are few scarier sounds than a vibrating phone, especially late at night when the last thing you want is to have an impromptu conversation. If you're as anti-social as this reviewer, the idea of having your cosy evening interrupted by unwanted human interaction is always a good starting point for a horror movie, and writer/director Bryan Bertino's latest horror gets off to a good start in this regard.
Home alone is Polly (Dakota Fanning), a 32-year-old screw-up living in a spacious house rented to her by her more together older sister. You can tell she's a screw-up because she smokes, drinks wine, eats ice cream from the container, sports tattoos and wears a Sex Pistols t-shirt. As if this characterisation wasn't lazy enough, her mother calls to tell her she's a screw-up and that she needs to get her act together for a college interview the following morning (the movie is set during Christmas; what college holds interviews during the holidays?).
Polly is interrupted by the arrival of an old woman (Katherine Hunter, in serious danger of becoming typecast in problematic "Aren't old folks creepy?" roles) who claims she knew the previous tenant. Taking pity, Polly invites her in out of the cold and offers to phone someone to collect the old dear. But things take a nasty turn when the old dodder tells Polly she's going to die tonight (rude!) before leaving her with a box containing an hourglass. Polly shuffles her unwanted guest away, but despite her best attempts to get rid of it, the box refuses to leave her coffee table. It turns out the box wants three things from Polly: something she hates, something she needs and something she loves, to be placed in that order.
It's certainly an intriguing set-up, but just like Fanning's last horror movie The Watched (or "The Watchers" in the US), Vicious doesn't know where to go from its promising starting point. The rules are too murky for the audience to get our heads around, so we spend much of the running time simply blindly following Polly through her ordeal. This removes much of the potential for suspense, as we never know what Polly should or shouldn't be doing to escape her predicted fate.
Things gradually devolve into Saw-esque gore as body parts are lopped off to appease the unseen puppet master pulling Polly's tightly wound strings. We also get the umpteenth horror riff on the mirror scene from Duck Soup, but the effect is somehow less convincing here than when Groucho Marx pulled it off in 1933. Polly's solutions to the three commands are predictable and uninspired. It all gets especially confusing in a final act that will have viewers rushing to Reddit forums for answers the film can't satisfyingly provide. I'm all for an ambiguous ending that leaves you asking questions, but if your biggest questions are "How did this get made?" and "Why hasn't Dakota Fanning fired her agent yet?", there's something seriously wrong.
Vicious is on Paramount+ and VOD from October 10th.
