{"id":204901,"date":"2025-10-11T07:20:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T07:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/204901\/"},"modified":"2025-10-11T07:20:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T07:20:12","slug":"dakota-fanning-in-decent-but-derivative-horror-flick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/204901\/","title":{"rendered":"Dakota Fanning in Decent but Derivative Horror Flick"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhat gives with horror films and boxes? The objects never reveal anything good, as anyone who\u2019s seen Hellraiser, Wish Upon<\/a>, 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<\/a> as a young woman who gets to find out for herself that boxes are just \u2026 evil. Maybe a lot of horror filmmakers experienced really bad Christmases when they were kids.<\/p>\n

\n\tFanning, for whom this film is certainly a showcase, plays Polly, who\u2019s revealed to be a physical and emotional mess in the opening scenes, in which she\u2019s shown anxiously puttering around her large, unkempt house, chain-smoking and trying on dresses for an upcoming important interview. But she\u2019s 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\u2019s 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<\/a>\u2019s The Tragedy of Macbeth<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tVicious \t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tMore bark than bite.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRelease date: Friday, October 10
Cast: Dakota Fanning, Kathryn Hunter, Mary McCormack, Rachel Blanchard, Deveyn Nekoda, Klea Scott, Emily Mitchell
Director-screenwriter: Bryan Bertino
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRated R,
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 43 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter some aimless small talk, the old woman soon gets down to her real, sinister business. \u201cI\u2019m going to start now,\u201d she says ominously, pulling out a wooden box and a large hourglass.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou\u2019re going to die tonight,\u201d she informs Polly. \u201cI\u2019m sorry, but it\u2019s true,\u201d 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.)<\/p>\n

\n\tThus 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\u2019s intent on protecting her young niece (Emily Mitchell), who she fears will fall victim to the box\u2019s machinations. Along the way, she subjects herself to a series of explicitly gory self-mutilations.<\/p>\n

\n\tDirector-screenwriter Bertino knows his way around the horror genre, having made such notable efforts as The Strangers<\/a> (the 2008 original, not the awful 2024 reboot) and The Dark and the Wicked<\/a>. The atmospherics he piles on here, including an assaultive sound design and plenty of jump scares, are generally effective. And he\u2019s elicited a compelling performance from Fanning, who commands the screen solo for long stretches at a time.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the longer the film goes on, and it seems to go on for a long time, the more you realize that it\u2019s more a series of scary moments than a cohesive story. Sure, it\u2019s 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\u2019 \u201cDedicated to the One I Love\u201d and Darlene Love\u2019s \u201cChristmas (Baby Please Come Home)\u201d sound spine-chilling, so, you know, thanks for that.<\/p>\n

\n\tReminiscent of Polanski\u2019s 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\u2019t come close to approximating its greatness. It\u2019s 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\u2019s more frustrating than provocative. By the time the old woman reappears in the final act and gives Polly yet another fateful instruction, you\u2019ve long since stopped looking for meaning in all the psychological murkiness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What gives with horror films and boxes? The objects never reveal anything good, as anyone who\u2019s seen Hellraiser,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,54160,134,127347,344,57468],"class_list":{"0":"post-204901","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-dakota-fanning","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-joel-coen","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-the-strangers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}