Filmmaker Bryan Bertino is no stranger to good old-fashioned American nihilism. The man behind films such as The Strangers and The Dark and the Wicked, his movies tend to pack a mean punch. Call them grim, ruthless, depressing, whatever you like. They’re the kind of films that toss hope into a meatgrinder and spit out a burger of despair, topped with dread-spiked ketchup. No one has ever watched a Bertino film and left thinking, “that was fun”.
The director’s latest, Vicious, just hit Paramount+ and is already topping the charts as the most-streamed horror film this week. More importantly? Bertino assures that the film lives up to its title.
What’s Vicious About?
Polly (Dakota Fanning) lives all alone in a big, creaky suburban house just begging for a haunting. Depressed and disconnected from the world, she’s a woman adrift in the current of society. But that all changes when an old woman (Kathryn Hunter) shows up with a mysterious box. She claims that on that very night, Polly will die. Rude. Thinking her a nut, Polly throws the woman out onto the street. Problem solved, right? Wrong. Because soon after, our protagonist discovers that the box left on her table is no ordinary box. It contains an evil that asks for three things: Something Polly hates, something she needs, and something she loves. Before the night is over, she’ll find out what her own life, and the people in it, truly mean to her.
A One-Woman Show of Personal Agony
Dread’s Editor in Chief, Mary Beth McAndrews, wrote in her review of Vicious that it, “packs the classic Bertino punch…bolstered by an incredible performance by Dakota Fanning”.
To some degree, Vicious plays a bit like a compilation of Bertino’s greatest hits. His previous film, Mockingbird, even follows a similar concept: a couple is given a camera containing instructions they must follow, or someone will die. Not that that’s bad news for the filmmaker’s fans. Quite the contrary. Because if you came for gruesome nihilism, well, gruesome nihilism is precisely what you get. Bertino blends nasty body horror with supernatural scares and emotionally devastating mind-fuckery for a brutal concoction that fits right in with the rest of his work.
As MB describes, Dakota Fanning enhances the terror through a gut-wrenching performance that feels almost too real at times. I’d even go as far as to argue this is one of Fanning’s best performances since her younger days in films like Man on Fire and Hide and Seek. Tasked with finding meaning in her own life, Polly faces the difficult choices most of us choose to avoid. The excruciating pain she suffers reflects that internal agony we experience in our darkest moments.
Hey, I never said Vicious was an enjoyable watch.
But it is very much a Bertino film in all of the ways that have made him the most prominent voice in American nihilism. So, whether you’re a fan of his or just like a little masochism with your horror, stream Vicious now that it’s on Paramount+. Oh, and next time a stranger shows up at your door in the middle of the night, maybe don’t invite them in for tea. That’s just asking to become a character in your very own horror film.
Categorized: News
