The Reel Review
A strange elderly woman arrives at Polly’s doorstep late one night with a mysterious box, telling Polly that she will die before the end of the night unless she places three things inside the box: something she needs, something she hates and something she loves. Polly soon discovers that the supernatural force behind the box has no intentions of ever leaving her alone. Dakota Fanning and Kathryn Hunter star in this horror/mystery.
Vicious is one viciously terrible movie. Writer/director Bryan Bertino again goes for the same ominous mood as in his other films, the only slightly better The Dark and the Wicked and the actually very well-done 2008 psychological horror The Strangers, but the dimly-lit, weak story about yet another cursed box seems more about grossing us out with pointless, self-mutilating, body horror (a knife to the neck and cutting off fingers and toes, to be specific) and creepy phone calls than exploring the premise’s supernatural angle or being even remotely scary.
As the increasingly distressed and paranoid Polly, Fanning does the best she could with the flimsy script and Hunter (The Front Room, Poor Things), as the spooky old lady, delivers. But everything else about this dour, boring film is absolutely terrible.
REEL FACTS
• Initially Paramount planned to release Vicious in theaters, but after several delays, switched to a straight-to-streaming release on Paramount+.
• Dakota Fanning gifted each of the crewmembers on Vicious with an engraved hourglass.
• Vicious was filmed in Ottawa, Canada.
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