Vicious (FANTASTIC) Doesn’t Live Up to Its Name

Title: Vicious

First Non-Festival Release: October 10 (Digital/Streaming Platforms)

Director: Bryan Bertino

Writer: Bryan Bertino

Runtime: 98 Minutes

Starring: Dakota Fanning, Kathryn Hunter, Mary McCormack

Where to Watch: Check out where to find it here

This film’s review was written after its screening at the Fantastic Film Festival in 2025.

How long can you drift through life before deciding to make a change? What sort of inciting event needs to happen for you to get your life together?

Polly (Dakota Fanning) is down on her luck and has been for a long time when a strange woman (Kathryn Hunter) arrives on her doorstep late one cold, winter night. The encounter is odd enough before the woman declares she will die that evening. In order to prevent this she must give three things to a plain black box gifted to her by the woman: something she hates, something she needs, and something she loves.

A pedestrian supernatural horror film, Vicious meanders through genre tropes and an overpowering score to tell its familiar tale of horror.

Writer/director Bryan Bertino has a storied history of putting complex, interesting characters in horrific scenarios. Vicious is no exception. Taking a morality tale approach to its Yuletide set horror, Vicious extolls on the importance of living for oneself. Polly is the perfect character to explore this. Down-on-her-luck in nearly every sense, just one look into her home tells you so much about who she is before she even finds the box. 

That being said, once the box trades hands everything in Vicious feels arbitrary. From selecting the victims to the tests it puts them through, the demon in this story doesn’t seem like it knows what it wants. Viewers can relate to Polly’s frustrations, as Polly is put through her paces, mostly to show how messed up her situation is rather than have her address her trauma or shortcomings. There are some cool ideas on the emptiness of depression and how it takes and takes and takes but Vicious seems more interested in its complicated logic than compelling storytelling.

Polly is such an underbaked character that it’s hard to care much about her trauma or impossible choices. Between her unkempt apartment, tense relationship with her family, and spiraling academic/professional ambitions, it’s clear to say her life is a mess. As Polly is forced to confront her insecurities and failures she doesn’t offer much insight, either declared or inferred. Her journey may cause her to do terrible things to herself and others but without a clear vision of what makes her a prime target for the box or how she evolves throughout the ordeal, it all just feels pointless in the end.

Dakota Fanning does her best, and the film clearly rests on her shoulders, but there’s only so much she can do to insert an emotional core into the story. Due to the nature of Vicious, Fanning is leading the charge without much help outside of a few uncomfortable scenes with Kathryn Hunter, where the weirdness festers. The opaque nature of Polly’s trauma is a challenge for Fanning. There are moments where the character breaks through but is otherwise dragged down by a script uninterested in consistency.

Perhaps its most irritating element is the constant overpowering score that inappropriately trades loud noises for scares. The scares of Vicious don’t go far enough, often relying on familiar jump scares to ratchet up the tension. The lack of emotional core and consistent storytelling makes it difficult for anything to land. What’s left in the wake are rather uninspired attempts at bodily injury and a sweeping orchestral movement.

A mixed bag of familiar tropes and gleeful violence, Vicious evaporates as quickly as its evil supernatural box materializes. Its over-reliance on familiar supernatural tropes and predictable scares dull the said viciousness of the wannabe slasher. Fanning’s presence adds to the film but becomes the sole draw with Vicious insisting on twisting itself into knots for its story. Bertino’s output shows that he is capable of making strong, interesting, and emotionally affecting horror tales. Misfires happen, and hopefully Vicious is a lesson worth remembering.

Overall Score? 5/10