Dakota Fanning Delivers in Horror Thriller That Lacks Depth

Dakota Fanning follows up the polarizing 2024 horror fantasy The Watchers with Vicious, the latest horror film from writer-director Bryan Bertino, the filmmaker behind 2008’s The Strangers. As with her previous effort, a fully invested Fanning delivers a compelling performance in a thematically confused horror movie that fails to stick the landing – a disappointment for fans of both the actress and Bertino, who’s struggled to match the success of his debut feature.

With Vicious, Bertino returns to the familiar trope of a stranger knocking at the door. This time, it’s Kathryn Hunter (Andor), a beloved character actor whose appearance typically indicates that something sinister is afoot. Hunter’s mysterious woman appears late one night on the doorstep of Polly (Fanning), a talented artist hesitantly planning her return to art school following a hiatus. Polly is struggling with her mental health following the death of her father, though the exact nature of her grief and trauma remain vague throughout.

We’ve only just met Polly and have barely gotten to know her at all – she’s close with her mother and sister, though her sister seems to be the favorite – when the mysterious older woman comes knocking. After a tense and awkward exchange, the woman leaves Polly with a box containing an hourglass and instructions to put three things inside: something she hates, something she needs, and something she loves. Trying to get rid of the box doesn’t work thanks to some supernatural aspect that, like too many things in Vicious, is never clearly defined.

Paramount

Predictably, fulfilling the requirements of the box requires violent sacrifices seemingly designed to challenge Polly’s will to live. Attempting to half-ass the assignment by tossing a pack of cigarettes in the box – “Something I hate,” she guesses – triggers an antagonistic response from some unseen, seemingly omniscient entity that can mimic anyone, including Polly’s mother, her dead father, and an innocent neighbor who tries to help. There are only a couple of rules: put three symbolic sacrifices in the box, and don’t ask anyone for help. And if you can’t figure out what to put in the box, don’t worry – the entity, whatever it is, will helpfully point you in the right direction.

Viewers, on the other hand, are out of luck when it comes to sussing out the purpose of this cursed mystery box. Conceptually, there’s a lot a filmmaker could do with a box and an hourglass, but Vicious eschews specificity, rendering the box and its bloody effects meaningless. Maybe it’s a metaphor about the ceaseless, unrequited demands of creating art. Perhaps it’s about the cruel indifference of life and the senseless pain we endure throughout.

The official synopsis suggests an answer that never crystallizes on screen: “Trapped in a terrifying world where reality bends and memory betrays, Polly must navigate a series of impossible choices. As time slips away, she’s forced to confront the darkness not just around her, but within her — before it consumes everything and everyone she’s ever known.” That sounds interesting, but the lack of insight into Polly’s mental health and her actions prior to the film’s inciting incident creates a profound disconnect.

Paramount

Fanning is a compelling presence on screen, particularly as a harrowed artist with tattoos who pointedly smokes cigarettes while ignoring the mounting pile of dishes in her sink. Endlessly watchable though she may be, Fanning’s performance alone isn’t enough to compensate for a narrative that grows increasingly redundant, making Vicious feel much longer than its reasonable 98-minute runtime. Though the actress spends much of the film alone, interacting with insidious unseen forces, Hunter makes a welcome return in the third act, just in time to needlessly complicate the narrative with a heretofore unmentioned rule: Polly has to give the box to someone else. There’s no apparent rhyme or reason to who is chosen – the box decides, and it seems to prefer women.

While it’s great to see a film with a predominantly female cast, the lack of thematic clarity makes it impossible to tell if Vicious has something to say about women’s mental health specifically, or if Bertino just casually decided to only cast women because he could – and why not? Men are given a disproportionate amount of screentime in movies and TV anyway.

As Vicious approaches its meandering conclusion (with no less than three false endings), that lack of meaning becomes a profound problem. Why did we just spend 90 minutes watching people commit acts of violence, mostly of the self-harm variety? To what end? Vicious is one of two upcoming Paramount horror releases. The other, Primate, is an exploitation throwback about a rabid chimpanzee in which the violence is relentlessly gory and absurd, and feels similarly senseless. Horror films are often a reflection of pervasive contemporary fears and our cultural environment. In that sense, both films effectively speak to our fears of senseless violence, but neither has anything to say about why it’s happening at all.

Vicious will be released by Paramount+ on October 10.