PLOT: A girl (Fanning), annoyed together with her station in life, is visited house alone at night time by a freaky outdated girl with a field. What occurs subsequent leaves her scuffling with unknown forces that query every part and depart her sanity in query.
REVIEW: One factor you possibly can’t say Vicious is wanting is expertise. In a single nook, you’ve gotten Dakota Fanning one-handing a movie that offers her a ton of room to flex her performing muscle mass and exhibit some rad new tattoos. Within the different, The Strangers creator Bryan Bertino makes an attempt to as soon as once more throw a whole kitchen sink of demons on the viewers. It makes one surprise why Vicious was pushed from a theatrical launch final February to a Paramount Plus direct-to-streaming launch this October tenth. It’s not that massive of a pink flag contemplating everyone seems to be pushing their streaming platforms nowadays and October is at all times an ideal spot for horror. However I feel the movie solutions this query for us as nicely. It’s simply not a really accessible expertise.
Bertino makes use of the identical skills he scared us all so mightily with in The Strangers and The Darkish and the Depraved as we watch Fanning stroll by her house alone at night time taking haunting telephone calls and answering thundering knocks at her door. In actual fact, there are a number of callbacks to The Strangers particularly in terms of the eerie musical selections and late-night guests. Solely this time it’s a query of what’s actual and what’s a figment of her creativeness as she struggles to ship the thriller field the three issues it asks for: One thing you need, One thing you want, and One thing you like. The kicker is that it is aware of if you’re mendacity, and in case your choices aren’t true? You endure.
This all units the desk for us to observe Fanning’s character wrestle to dig deep inside herself about who she actually is. It’s like being haunted by your individual lack of self-awareness. It appears on paper like one thing that may actually get after it on display, however sadly that’s not the case for a lot of Vicious. The environment is there: a dimly lit home on a darkish road throughout a snowy night that may be nearly cozy if it weren’t for the terrible issues happening that night time. Fanning is implausible, carrying the overwhelming majority of the movie, taking scary telephone calls and being chased round her house by her personal private demons. However because the viewers waits patiently for the supply to land, it turns into a irritating expertise. The audio blares as a telephone rings or a imaginative and prescient of a girl screaming seems out of nowhere, but it surely doesn’t all join into something that makes a lot sense on the time. It’s exhausting to clarify, but it surely feels just like the dynamics of Vicious are merely off. You perceive its intentions and consider that they arrive from a pure place. However the trip is just too bumpy and narratively uneven to get pleasure from. By the top of the movie, the place Bertino and firm are actually going for it, I discovered myself too exhausted to care anymore, and that’s unlucky as a result of there was lots right here to root for.
Vicious is a really private movie that tries to infuse itself with horror theatrics {that a} basic viewers can get into, and that’s an admirable plan. Sadly, I got here away being extra annoyed with the expertise than the rest, and I worry a basic viewers would additionally discover it fairly inaccessible. That being mentioned, I consider there’s an viewers for Vicious in those who get pleasure from piecing collectively a troublesome puzzle. It’s not that it’s exhausting to know, you possibly can simply grasp the plot. However you possibly can inform there’s plenty of depth to Vicious that those that are keen to spend extra time in that world will have the ability to get one thing from. Perhaps you!
