“ Vicious ” by Dakota Fanning, inevitably, flocks a premise of killer

Polly acquires a mysterious box. In this box, she has to put three things: something she hates, something she needs and something she loves. It is the basic premise of ViciousThe new film by the writer-director Bryan Bertino (Foreigners) With Dakota Fanning, and it’s incredibly attractive. Instantly, that is reminiscent of a series of questions. Where does the box come from? How does it work? What’s going on if you don’t respect? And can a film pay for something so terribly enticing?

Well, after seeing Vicious During his world premiere at the Fantastic Fest 2025, we can answer the latter: no, he cannot reimburse everything. Actually, Vicious Do not answer almost all the questions about his premise, launching ideas on a wall that undermines and frustrated. Fanning is excellent, as you might expect, but it is handcuffed by a horribly managed killed idea.

As Vicious start, we get A Answer, namely how the character of Fanning Polly gets the box. Shortly after, she learns the rules, but what the film is missing from there is almost everything else. The box is fundamentally its own character; He claims that his victim will die if Polly does not conform, but that never explains how or why it would happen. Instead, if the box does not like what it does, it literally unloads it to explain to her, telling her exactly what she wants to sacrifice herself, and she can even lie to her. Consequently, all cohesion of the film disappears. If the box knows what it wants, where is the drama? Why do we care about all of this if everything is predetermined? Why do we need a box if this curse can use the phone or television to terrorize its victims? And if the box can lie, why would someone trust him?

For the majority of the execution, we just look at Polly torture himself endlessly. She is a minor spoiler, but even after she did exactly what the box wants her to do, the film continues, questions if all this was worth it. All this could be good if we had a great global theme on sacrifice or love to consider, but there is practically nothing there. In the end, the film tries to close a kind of thematic feeling, but at that time, we are so frustrated in the way everything can, and will change stage scene, so it does not hold.

There is disgusting gore throughout, and in its best moments, the film allows us to think about what we would do with the box. But most of the time, this is when the phone rings, telling Polly what to do, so that self-reflection or potential relatability disappears. Instead, we end up with an excellent lead performance in an exasperating film that never delivers in the way we hoped.

Vicious I had its world premiere at the Fantastic Fest 2025 and will make its debut on Paramount + on October 10.

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