31 Days of Halloween: Vicious

2025, Bryan Bertino (The Monster) -- download

We saw one of his earlier movies, The Monster. 

The movie opens with a familiar intonation of the voice of depression. I am tired, tired of banging my head against the wall, tired of being me. This is a movie that is not quiet about its metaphors, for trauma, for deep depression, but it does come with some mild hope. Very mild. After all, its a horror movie, not treatment.

Polly (Dakota Fanning, The Watchers) lives in her sister's house, well one sister and brother in law are renting to her. Mega fucking huge house for a 30ish young art student working dead end jobs that she really really doesn't want to go to. She is so deep in the throes of depression that she doesn't want to do anything. This is not the passing kind of depression, something you can curl up on the sofa with a tub of ice cream kind, but the long lasting, impact every aspect of your life kind. She seems to mostly live with it, but is not really living. She hints at maybe trying to date someone her sister is setting her up with it, but can barely fake interest.

Then the box arrives. An old woman (Kathryn Hunter, Andor; yep, Syril's mom) knocks on her door on a cold winter night. Polly is kind, invites the woman in, offers her some tea. The woman seems confused, until she is not. She has passed the box onto Polly and explains the brief rules: don't tell anyone about the box, and give the box what it wants, or you are dead. In fact, the old woman intones that Polly is already dead. Polly freaks out and kicks the old woman out, leaving her box in the middle of the road. It finds its way back to her coffee table.

The box is an asshole. The idea is that you have to sacrifice three things, each before the sand runs through the hourglass. Something you love, something you hate, something you need. Polly is chain smoking, barely starting one cigarette before she lights the next. That should be easy, right? Cigarettes. Nope, nothing is easy. Fuck with the box, and the box fucks with you via visions and imagery and sound and phone calls. The dead call you, monsters under the bed grab you, memories haunt you. Its relentless, manipulative, conniving. And deceitful. After all, its an evil fucking box, Dybbuk-style.

The movie is pretty effective with the standards of American jump scare horror movies, and the ever growing panic and dread Polly feels about what she will be compelled to do is tangible. Given how the movie will begin, we understand that the only way she can stop this (and yes, its been a single night) is to give the box to someone else. Again, there is no real mythology present in the movie, so really, the rules are loose, and what is explained by the box (when it calls you in other people's voices) can be a lie, so really there aren't any rules, just the tortures of a cursed item. Like The Monster, there is no explainer, just fear and dread, and really, that's what horror movies are about.

And yes, the metaphor for depression was a hammer to the forehead, even when they weren't depicting Polly accurately. Depression lies, depression takes, depression has no real rules and just wants to hurt you, or more accurately, have you hurt yourself. But, you can stand up to it.

Meta note: From the get go, Marmy went, "Where is this shot? I recognize that house." She was right, we did. Its in Ottawa and the architecture was clear.