Vicious

Where do you start with this film? The wee old lady with a strange box, who knocks on the door? The voices from beyond and on the phone? The wee old lady who shows up later?

Who was she? Where did the box come from? Who really cares?

That's the best I can say about it.

Except to say, I wouldn't bother wasting your time.

"Vicious" is one of those films that completely misleads you. The premise is great, genuinely intriguing: a woman receives a mysterious box from an old lady, in which she must place three things: something she hates, something she needs, and something she loves. It's an idea full of potential, perfect for a psychological thriller that could have pulled us right in. The problem is that everything the movie promises simply never happens.

The execution is a mess. The editing is honestly one of the worst I've seen in a long time. There's a moment where the protagonist vomits a key, faints, and suddenly we cut to her in a completely different house talking to a random woman, with zero explanation or context. For several minutes, you're left wondering if it's a flashback, a hallucination, or a continuation of the previous scene. That's the perfect example of the movie's problems: terrible editing, poor directing, and a story with absolutely no direction. It feels like a film stitched together without any real sense of logic or continuity.

Technically, it's not much better. The CGI is weak, the gore looks ridiculous, and it's painfully obvious that everything was done digitally without care. The third act is hollow and meaningless. You spend the entire movie waiting for some kind of resolution or impactful climax that never arrives, which only makes the experience even more frustrating.

The only thing that barely holds this movie together is Dakota Fanning. She gives a genuinely good performance and clearly tries her best, but the script gives her nothing to work with. Her character is poorly written, and while the film teases some interesting hints about her past and possible traumas, none of it ever gets explored. Everything is left hanging, as if the director himself wasn't sure what message he wanted to deliver.

In the end, "Vicious" is a complete waste of a good idea. It had potential but ends up being poorly directed, terribly edited, and visually uninspired. It feels like it could have been something interesting, but instead it's just another mediocre film, honestly, one of the worst I've seen this year. A project so messy that even I could've edited it better.

Vicious has a lovely vibe to it in terms of creating a desolate feeling inside of a suburban street. The enigma of the plot is tantalizing as we contemplate what is meaningful to us, and we contemplate what we would do for it. And, we watch the movie wondering what this character will do.

As for the overall film, it has an emptiness to it that doesn't get filled and doesn't get resolved. I finished it feeling unsatisfied. The idea suggested at the end isn't complete, and maybe that ambiguity is to make us think about our own lives. This may have come across better if the main character wasn't quite so trope laden as the troubled mess-up of a person.

And while Dakota Fanning embodies this character well, I wished I cared for this character more. Another bleak film to weigh down our sense of selves as the world crumbles around us. Sigh. What joy.

This movie was watchable - however the plot is similar to a 1986 Twilight Zone - called Button with Mare Whittingham - and also some of the plot from Smile ...but there really aren't many original ideas for movies anymore- still - I enjoyed the movie it as a new movie ... Dakota Fanning's acting is always great - so if you're a fan of her's give it a watch .

If you enjoy listening to someone gasp-cry for an hour and a half this will be the perfect movie for you. Can't say there's really any spoilers here since the plot was 90% listening to the relentless gasping of the lead character. Might have been 100% of said gasping but with 20 minutes to go everyone in the room agreed that we couldn't take it anymore and we turned it off.