Writer-director Bryan Bertino kicked off a wave of “knock at the door” horror with “The Strangers” (2008), paving the way for the likes of “Knock Knock,” “Knock at the Cabin” and “Heretic,” to name a few. In the age of texting and scrolling, a knock at your door is unusual, and the next step after that can be ominous. In “Vicious,” he tries to go deeper into the psychology of a random visit from a stranger.
While Polly’s (Dakota Fanning) visitor in “Vicious” is not asking if Tamara is home, Bertino is still interested in how a person can be going about their business, get a knock at their door, and have their life turned upside down. Here he adds the supernatural and tries for thematic layers as an elderly lady (Kathryn Hunter), initially acting confused, pawns off a box and an hourglass on Polly.
Bertino is perhaps working through his own midlife crisis through the guise of Polly, whose crisis would be one-third-life, I guess. Fair enough, as Fanning is an old soul. Now housesitting in a large old home for her family, Polly started college but didn’t finish, has had several jobs, and has a job interview tomorrow but her motivation level hovers around zero. Polly, who we can tell is the arty type by arms full of tattoos, is weighed down by ennui, unable to commit.
“Vicious” (2025)
Director: Bryan Bertino
Writer: Bryan Bertino
Stars: Dakota Fanning, Kathryn Hunter, Mary McCormack
Solid setup for what’s mostly a one-character movie, and Fanning certainly is not the flaw. But Bertino should’ve committed more to his screenplay, which – unless I missed something – makes very little sense. Thus, we see Polly doing things that don’t make sense.
Though “Vicious” has nice cinematography from Tristan Nyby – mostly on a dark, deathly quiet street in wintertime – and Bertino does some interesting camera movements – overall it’s a frustrating and boring experience.
A game with confusing rules (Spoilers)
(SPOILERS FOLLOW.)
The box – via instructions on the phone from an entity that can copy loved-one’s voices – demands that Polly drop in “something you hate, something you need, and something you love.” The box will know if she’s being dishonest in her selections. The hourglass drops sand, implying that she will die if she does not deliver these three things.
I can see how the box is a metaphor for what life asks of a person, but Bertino can’t make it make narrative sense (even accepting the supernaturalism). For one, the lady who is passing this curse on to Polly is still alive (although granted her hand is bleeding and bandaged), so the cursed game – albeit twisted – seems winnable. For another, Polly is so filled with ennui I feel like she wouldn’t even do anything; she’d tell the fake phone voice to f*** off.
So anyway, she drops in “something you hate”: a religious cross, as cancer took her father and God did not intervene. No problem. “Something you need”: A pinky toe doesn’t count, but a pointer finger does. Not sure why. “Something you love”: Her young niece. This is where the screenplay collapses.
Obviously, Polly isn’t going to kill her niece; she’d rather die. But the niece dies anyway, I guess because Polly fears the idea (?), and Polly cuts off a lock of the kid’s hair for the box. Good enough, and I guess she wins the game? Then she passes off the box to a neighbor girl, Tara (Devyn Nekoda), and the “one last scare” finds Tara muttering “Something you want” as her parents’ corpses lie in the background.
Either “Vicious” makes no sense, or it does make some sort of sense (within its own supernatural rulebook) but is unclear. Either situation is a storytelling failure. Polly starts off numb and disaffected and learns nothing. She has passed the test via randomness.
Is “Vicious” trying for some sort of “It Follows” thing with the passing off of the box? Well, it’s never clearly stated that anyone has to pass the box on to someone else. If Polly has won the game once, would the box make her play again if she doesn’t pawn it off on the next person?
(END OF SPOILERS.)
Because … why?
“Vicious” had me pondering logistics far too often, and almost all of Polly’s actions made me think “But why is she doing that?” The phrase “Because you were home” – the reason the “Strangers” protagonists’ lives are ruined – is chillingly meaningless, and it’s like Bertino longed to expand that answer into something with more heft and emotion in “Vicious.” He’s unable to deepen the answer, and even casting Fanning isn’t enough to fake it.