What gives with horror films and boxes? The objects never reveal anything good, as anyone who’s seen Hellraiser, Wish Upon, The Box and countless others can tell you. And yet the literal plot device keeps showing up again and again, most recently in the latest effort from director Bryan Bertino starring Dakota Fanning as a young woman who gets to find out for herself that boxes are just … evil. Maybe a lot of horror filmmakers experienced really bad Christmases when they were kids.
Fanning, for whom this film is certainly a showcase, plays Polly, who’s revealed to be a physical and emotional mess in the opening scenes, in which she’s shown anxiously puttering around her large, unkempt house, chain-smoking and trying on dresses for an upcoming important interview. But she’s not so self-absorbed as to ignore an old woman, confused and probably suffering from dementia, who knocks on her door on the wintry night. She invites the woman in, which is clearly not a good idea since she’s played by Kathryn Hunter, an incredibly talented thespian who can be so creepy onscreen that she played not just one but all three witches in Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth.
Vicious
More bark than bite.
After some aimless small talk, the old woman soon gets down to her real, sinister business. “I’m going to start now,” she says ominously, pulling out a wooden box and a large hourglass.
“You’re going to die tonight,” she informs Polly. “I’m sorry, but it’s true,” she adds, sounding like the worst life-insurance salesman ever. But Polly might be able to avoid her fate if she fills the box with three things: something she hates, something she needs and something she loves. (If the film becomes a hit, expect the tie-in party game to be in stores this Christmas.)
Thus begins a long night of soul-searching and much, much worse for Polly, who turns to various people for help, including her mother (Mary McCormack), her older sister (Rachel Blanchard) and her neighbor (Klea Scott). Mostly, she’s intent on protecting her young niece (Emily Mitchell), who she fears will fall victim to the box’s machinations. Along the way, she subjects herself to a series of explicitly gory self-mutilations.
Director-screenwriter Bertino knows his way around the horror genre, having made such notable efforts as The Strangers (the 2008 original, not the awful 2024 reboot) and The Darkand the Wicked. The atmospherics he piles on here, including an assaultive sound design and plenty of jump scares, are generally effective. And he’s elicited a compelling performance from Fanning, who commands the screen solo for long stretches at a time.
But the longer the film goes on, and it seems to go on for a long time, the more you realize that it’s more a series of scary moments than a cohesive story. Sure, it’s intriguing when Polly begins to choke and finally spits out a large antique key. And when she encounters a demon in her closet. And when her neighbor horrifyingly begins stabbing herself repeatedly. And when she sees her reflection in her mirror, which begins talking to her. And it manages to make such classic songs as The Mamas & the Papas’ “Dedicated to the One I Love” and Darlene Love’s “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” sound spine-chilling, so, you know, thanks for that.
Reminiscent of Polanski’s Repulsion in its nightmarish depiction of an unraveling mind, Vicious, which was initially slated for a theatrical release but is instead streaming on Paramount+, doesn’t come close to approximating its greatness. It’s perhaps quixotic to expect narrative coherence in a film of this type, but Bertino plays particularly fast and loose with the rules here, resulting in a viewing experience that’s more frustrating than provocative. By the time the old woman reappears in the final act and gives Polly yet another fateful instruction, you’ve long since stopped looking for meaning in all the psychological murkiness.
