PLOT: A woman (Fanning), frustrated with her station in life, is visited home alone at night by a freaky old lady with a box. What happens next leaves her struggling with unknown forces that question everything and leave her sanity in question.
REVIEW: One thing you can’t say Vicious is short of is talent. In one corner, you have Dakota Fanning one-handing a film that gives her a ton of room to flex her acting muscles and show off some rad new tattoos. In the other, The Strangers creator Bryan Bertino attempts to once again throw an entire kitchen sink of demons at the audience. It makes one wonder why Vicious was pushed from a theatrical release last February to a Paramount Plus direct-to-streaming release this October 10th. It’s not that big of a red flag considering everyone is pushing their streaming platforms these days and October is always a great spot for horror. But I think the film answers this question for us as well. It’s just not a very accessible experience.
Bertino uses the same talents he scared us all so mightily with in The Strangers and The Dark and the Wicked as we watch Fanning walk through her home alone at night taking haunting phone calls and answering thundering knocks at her door. In fact, there are several callbacks to The Strangers in particular when it comes to the eerie musical choices and late-night visitors. Only this time it’s a question of what is real and what is a figment of her imagination as she struggles to deliver the mystery box the three things it asks for: Something you want, Something you need, and Something you love. The kicker is that it knows when you’re lying, and if your offerings aren’t true? You suffer.
This all sets the table for us to watch Fanning’s character struggle to dig deep within herself about who she really is. It’s like being haunted by your own lack of self-awareness. It seems on paper like something that can really get after it on screen, but unfortunately that’s not the case for much of Vicious. The atmosphere is there: a dimly lit house on a dark street during a snowy evening that would be almost cozy if it weren’t for the awful things taking place that night. Fanning is fantastic, carrying the vast majority of the film, taking frightening phone calls and being chased around her home by her own personal demons. But as the audience waits patiently for the delivery to land, it becomes a frustrating experience. The audio blares as a phone rings or a vision of a woman screaming appears out of nowhere, but it doesn’t all connect into anything that makes much sense at the time. It’s hard to explain, but it feels like the dynamics of Vicious are simply off. You understand its intentions and believe that they come from a pure place. But the ride is simply too bumpy and narratively choppy to enjoy. By the end of the film, where Bertino and company are really going for it, I found myself too exhausted to care anymore, and that’s unfortunate because there was a lot here to root for.
Vicious is a very personal film that tries to infuse itself with horror theatrics that a general audience can get into, and that’s an admirable plan. Unfortunately, I came away being more frustrated with the experience than anything else, and I fear a general audience would also find it quite inaccessible. That being said, I believe there is an audience for Vicious in those that enjoy piecing together a difficult puzzle. It’s not that it’s hard to understand, you can easily grasp the plot. But you can tell there is a lot of depth to Vicious that those who are willing to spend more time in that world will be able to get something from. Maybe you!
