In one of the best opening sequences of the year, a clearly broken young woman named Polly (Dakota Fanning) listens to series of voice messages from people who are all varying degrees of disappointed in her—her sister (Rachel Blanchard), her mother (Mary McCormack), her boss. The only one she feels any love from is her young niece (Emily Mitchell), but even that isn’t helping at this moment.
Polly is chain smoking her life away in the home where she’s living alone, hiding from these voices—and the expectations she can never meet—when someone knocks at her door. The unexpected visitor is an older, frail-looking woman (played by the always-great, gravel-voiced Kathryn Hunter), who seems confused and lost but soon reveals she’s there with a gift and a message. The gift is an ornate box with an hourglass inside, and the message is that Polly will die that night if she doesn’t put three things inside the box: something she hates, something she needs, and something she loves.
Polly kicks the woman and the box out into the snow, but somehow the box ends up back on her coffee table. Still refusing to play this demented game, she starts seeing strange and scary things around the house, and she soon realizes she and possibly her family will be tormented to death if she doesn’t follow the instruction honestly. She makes mistakes (somehow the box knows when she’s lying about her feelings), but slowly, within the time constraints (the hourglass resets after each item is accepted by the box, Polly untangles her own inner darkness and uncertainty to get the box what it asked for. But that doesn’t mean this ordeal is over by a long shot.
During the course of the night, she briefly seeks help from a neighbor (Klea Scott) and even involves another young woman (Devyn Nekoda), who might be able to help her. But for the most part, Vicious is a one-woman show, and Dakota Johnson is such a gifted actor that she sells every aspect of this tormented woman’s existence, both before and after this box enters her life.
Directed by Bryan Bertino (The Dark and the Wicked, the original version of The Strangers), the film could easily be seen as a metaphor for mounting pressures taking their mental toll on someone less able to deal with them. There are many moments we aren’t sure are real or manifested by this force that is torturing Polly, but that force might be her own mind. I love horror that takes a simple premise and elevates it with effective acting and filmmaking; Vicious accomplishes both and should make for solid Halloween-time viewing.
The film begins streaming October 10 on Paramount+.
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