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 confront her darkest fears and make unthinkable choices or face death, unfurling an onslaught of physical, emotional, and psychological anguish by way of ghastly apparitions and bloodletting.
For much of the runtime, Fanning is acting solo, with no scene partners save for a few of Polly’s inner demons who pop up throughout the night to torment her. Bertino previously praised her performance in Vicious and expanded upon their collaboration in a new chat ahead of the film’s release.
While Fanning recently shared that making horror films and their extreme emotional and technical demands were fairly new to her, Bertino points out that she navigated both extremely well.
Dakota Fanning stars in Paramount Pictures’ “VICIOUS.”
“What was so fantastic with working with Dakota on this was her ability to infuse a kind of emotional performance that was tracking and building, while at the same time working with the technical ramifications of what we were doing. I had never really experienced anybody who could fall down and hit a certain mark while also sobbing and then turning around and then begin a 10-minute phone conversation monologue. It was at times breathtaking to look at, and so I think as a director, within three or four days, it changed everything, like how we were scheduling the movie, how we were planning out our days. Because we suddenly knew that we had someone who was in complete command of who she is as a performer, and it was really a fantastic experience to get to do.”
That Polly lives alone means dialogue is fairly sparse, as is backstory. Much of the character’s identity and personality can be inferred from the details and Jennifer Spence‘s production design. “This movie was strange in that I wanted it to be colorful. I wanted it to have a lot of patterns. I wanted it to have a lot more textures. We knew the house was going to be a character. For this movie, I think we were using a lot of ’70s references. I pulled a lot of stills from Black Sunday, All the President’s Men, and Klute. All these movies where, back in that period, you would have rugs and sheets.
“We used that as a jumping-off point; we wanted every aspect of the movie to reflect something about Polly. So, Jen went in and did all her own paintings and really created this other story where you can, without ever hammering it home, see different hobbies Polly has started and stopped as she is trying to find herself. It was just another way for us to layer in parts of who she is. It’s like peeling back layers and seeing a little bit more here or there. Whether it’s what she chose to tattoo on her body or the paintings that she has made for herself, it’s all part of who this character, who this woman was at the beginning and who she is at the end.”
Dakota Fanning stars in Paramount Pictures’ “VICIOUS.”
Vicious goes for the jugular when it comes to putting Polly through the wringer, but also in terms of scares. The box holds a mirror up to Polly’s anxieties and fears, exploiting them in ruthless ways. That also means a variety of unsettling specters.
“It was taking Polly’s interpretation, like Polly’s fears, and building off of that,” Bertino tells us of designing these ghoulish visions. “I think she had some memory of her father, that was some sense of a skin texture that had changed. Maybe as she saw him towards the end, and then that grows into something else. For her mom, I was interested in the idea of a broken doll. If you freeze the frame, there are these cracks because it’s almost her mom.”
Bertino’s latest employs a punishing sound design that keeps you on edge, by design. “I definitely wanted it to feel loud. I wanted her to be bombarded, and I wanted the audience to be bombarded. I think I’ve referenced it before, but Phil Spector’s The Wall of Sound was a huge influence, the way all these combined elements could build. You watch the beginning of the movie, and there are these shots spinning, and it was like, I just wanted to start to hit you with different things and elements, almost like jazz horns and screaming.
Dakota Fanning stars in Paramount Pictures’ “VICIOUS.”
“Because I wanted to communicate what it’s like in my own head at times when I am full of anxiety or I’m full of mental anguish about choices I have to make. I wanted to take all of that and try to make the horror version of that. It was a combination of working with Scott Hecker and his partner Chuck Michael, and then Tom Schraeder, my composer, whom I also worked with on Dark and The Wicked. From the beginning, we started planning that sound was going to be a huge part of it. This is the first time I worked with my editor, Tad Dennis, and the first question I brought up to him was, ‘How are you with cutting sound?’ Because I knew that we would be doing it from day one.”
Vicious may arrive ahead of Halloween, but it takes place over Christmas. Snowy isolation always provides fertile ground for horror, but the holy holiday brings added heft to Polly’s predicament.
“I always knew I wanted it to be a dark, snowy night and for a couple of reasons,” the director explains. “One being that just makes you feel tied in, it makes you feel like you can’t get away a little easier. There’s something about this kind of scenario that the first option wouldn’t be to leave the house. Because when it’s snowing outside, that isn’t always the first thing you think of. But yeah, I love winter time, and maybe it’s because I grew up in Texas and I didn’t get it as much.”
Mary McCormack stars in Paramount Pictures’ “VICIOUS.”
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