‘Vicious’ Review: Dakota Fanning Screams Her Way Through a Horror Endurance Test That Wears Itself Out

The Strangers writer-director Bryan Bertino explains the ending of Vicious

The 2025 horror movie Vicious puts its protagonist through the wringer. Haunted and threatened by a mysterious force that forces her to do terrible things to survive, Polly (Dakota Fanning) spends the film suffering, screaming, and bleeding as the demands on her escalate.

‘Vicious’ Review: Dakota Fanning Screams Her Way Through a Horror Endurance Test That Wears Itself Out

After launching a home-invasion franchise with the simple premise of three masked figures terrorizing a couple on the rocks, “The Strangers” creator Bryan Bertino has maintained his sensibility as a writer-director, spinning other original horror chamber pieces unmoored by sympathy. Now, the horror helmer’s latest effort shows characteristic daring in its detachment. Generically titled “Vicious,” […]

Movie Review: “VICIOUS” puts Dakota Fanning through an unnerving if uneven ordeal - Rue Morgue

Movie Review: “VICIOUS” puts Dakota Fanning through an unnerving if uneven ordeal By MICHAEL GINGOLD Starring Dakota Fanning, Kathryn Hunter and Mary McCormackWritten and directed by Bryan BertinoParamount What a shame it is that while the recent underachieving knockoff of Bryan Bertino’s fright fave THE STRANGERS recently scored nationwide release, the lat…

'Vicious' Movie Ending Explained & Summary: Were Lainie And Her Daughter Dead?

Bryan Bertino’s horror film, Vicious, starring Dakota Fanning, unfolds on a winter night when an old woman (Kathryn Hunter) knocks on Polly’s door and asks for a glass of water. Polly’s life was a mess, and the condition of the house she lived in reflected her mental state. Her kitchen sink was overflowing with used cups and plates. All the houseplants were dead. She possibly never found the energy to tidy up the spacious house that she’d rented…

Vicious Review – A Pointless, Unpleasant Slog From a Talentless Director

Bryan Bertino started his career with The Strangers, one of the most pointless and stupid horror films of its era, so it makes sense that his latest directorial effort is as bland and awful as his debut. Vicious is a creatively bankrupt exercise in lazy horror tropes, a film so devoid of style, character, or purpose that its existence is genuinely baffling. Despite a lovely, committed performance from Dakota Fanning and a great supporting role f…

Bryan Bertino on the Nightmarish Scares and Sound of ‘Vicious’

Writer/Director Bryan Bertino (The Dark and the Wicked, The Strangers) is unleashing icy, isolated chills this Halloween season with Vicious, a wintry holiday-set horror movie that puts star Dakota Fanning through a night of abject terror. Vicious dares you to open the box for its debut on Paramount+ and Digital today, October 10, but for Fanning’s Polly, she’ll have no choice when a stranger shows up at her door one night. Polly is forced to co…