Dakota Fanning is firmly establishing herself as a scream queen with her latest venture, the 2025 horror film Vicious, which premiered on Paramount+ earlier this month. This chilling movie comes from the creative mind of Bryan Bertino, the director celebrated for his work on the 2008 hit, The Strangers.

Vicious follows the harrowing journey of Polly, portrayed by Fanning, as she battles with anxiety and depression. Her life spirals further into chaos when an enigmatic elderly woman, played hauntingly by Kathryn Hunter, curses her with a peculiar box that demands relentless tributes and torments her with its sinister presence.

The film also features performances by Mary McCormack, Rachel Blanchard, and Devyn Nekoda, building a tight-knit cast that brings this claustrophobic horror story to life. Perfect for a night of streaming during the spooky season, Vicious offers not only chilling visuals but also serves as a metaphor for the struggles with fear, anxiety, and panic attacks. If the symbolism eludes you, Decider provides a comprehensive breakdown of the plot and its deeper meanings, especially the symbolic significance of the mysterious box.

Vicious 2025 movie plot summary:

At the heart of the story is Polly, who lives alone in a spacious house, grappling with her mental health while preparing for an important graduate school interview. Her night takes a disturbing turn when an elderly woman, appearing lost and disoriented, arrives at her door. Polly, in a gesture of kindness, invites her in and offers assistance.

The atmosphere quickly shifts to eerie when the old woman ominously announces the beginning of something sinister, producing a wooden box and an hourglass. She forewarns Polly of her impending doom, expressing regret for what she claims is “the worst thing she’s ever done.” Despite Polly’s attempts to eject her, the curse has already taken hold, setting the stage for a haunting ordeal.

Polly starts hearing an evil voice—the box—which speaks to using the voice of her mother, father, and other people in her life, who call her on the phone. The box tells Polly she will die when the hour glass runs out… unless she gives the box three things: something she hates, something she needs, and something she loves.

Polly starts giving the box things. First she tries her pack of cigarettes as “something she hates.” The box calls out her lie—she is supposed to hate cigarettes, but doesn’t actually hate them. It rejects the offer. Polly gets more truthful when she gives the box her cross necklace. After the death of her father, a devout Christian, Polly now hates God. The box accepts this offer. Great! One down, two to go.

After some more psychological torture, Polly infers that the box wants her to cut off her pinky toe as the next offering. So, she does that. But then the box changes it’s mind. Just kidding, it actually wants her index finger. Polly cuts that off too. At some point, during all of this, Polly gets a call from her sister, who is concerned after Polly, apparently, called her dozens of times. Polly, who did not call her sister, realizes the box is impersonating her, and intends to attack her sister and young niece. She races over to their house, where she finds them both dead.

A grieving Polly cuts off a lock of her niece’s hair to give to the box as “something she loves.” The box accepts the offer, but the torment doesn’t stop. As the sand keeps falling in the hour glass, Polly panics, giving the box more and more and more things. Then she remembers that the old woman passed on the box to her. She decides to do the same, hoping to finally end the curse.

Polly knocks on doors in her sister’s neighborhood, until someone finally answers. The woman, Tara (Devyn Nekoda) reluctantly lets Polly into her house, but warns Polly that her parents will be home soon. Polly gives Tara the box, and suddenly knows Tara’s name, and that she’s lying about her parents. Polly tells Tara she’s going to die, apologizes, and leaves.

But the curse still isn’t lifted. The old woman comes back, still clutching the box, saying that it wants her to kill Polly. This suggests that even after the old woman gave Polly the box, the old woman was still cursed by it. A struggle ensues, and Polly kills the old woman. While the woman is dying, she tells Polly that the box chooses broken people, and that it needs fear. She advises Polly not to be afraid of death.

Vicious movie ending explained:

Polly takes the old woman’s advice. Though she still seems afraid, she stops giving the box things, and accepts her death. She lets the hour glass run out of sand, and this seems to lift the curse. Polly finds her sister and niece alive and well. She pays a visit to Tara, to warn her not to play the box’s game. Tara seems confused, and insists she wasn’t home last night, and that she doesn’t know what Polly is talking about.

Polly apologizes. Her cell phone rings, and she begins to panic, worried that the box is calling again. However, she does not pick up the phone. Instead she ignores it, lights a cigarette, and the phone stops ringing.

In the last scene of the movie, we cut back to Tara. We see that she has cut off her fingers, and has been offering things to the box. Written on blood on her wall is a message to “Trust no one” and that “she lies,” which would explain why she dismissed Polly. We also see that she has killed her parents. So, yes, Tara is cursed by the box now, and it’s Polly’s fault. With that, the movie ends.

Vicious 2025 movie meaning:

The box in Vicious feeds on fear, so in order to “defeat” the curse, you need to not be afraid, and let the sand run out. Giving it things doesn’t end the curse, and giving it to someone else doesn’t end the curse—it curses them, too.

So what does it all mean? Well, according to the Vicious writer/director Bryan Bertino, the box is a representation for out-of-control anxiety. If you feed it, it will just get worse. If you dump it on other people, it will spread. But if you ignore, it might go away—at least, temporarily. But you can never fully escape.

According to a Polygon report, at a Q&A at Fantastic Fest, when asked if Vicious had a happy ending, Bertino said, “I certainly think that at the end of the day, this movie has a lightness that some of my movies haven’t. To me, the message is that you’re never really going to escape things, so you just have to keep going.”

Bertino went on to explain that movie was inspired by his own experience with panic attacks. “Probably a couple of years before I started writing the script, I started having panic attacks, and was dealing with anxiety in a way that I haven’t dealt with before,” he said. “That opened my eyes to all your different senses that are going off when you’re having these moments. […] I wanted to bombard an audience and bombard a character, to try on some level to capture maybe some of the things that I had felt.”

The final scene where Polly ignores the phone is, Bertino said, a representation of the battle Polly will be fighting for the rest of her life.

“When I look at this movie and think about her standing on the road at the end, hearing the ringing and knowing it’s just going to keep going, and she’ll have to keep choosing. Very rarely do we actually slay the dragons that we’re dealing with,” Bertino said. “Or at least that I’m dealing with. I’m just kind of constantly fighting.”

And as for Tara? She represents the people Polly can’t help. “In the very end of the movie, Tara is locked in her own thing,” Bertino said. “That had so much to do with the way that — I’m sure all of us have tried to explain to someone we care about, ‘Oh, don’t do that, because I’ve been there before.’ And people have to go through their own battles.”