Courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
Audio By Carbonatix
The landscape of fear often looks like home. For Crowley native Bryan Bertino, the writer and director behind some of modern horror’s most unsettling films, the familiar territory of the Dallas-Fort Worth area is more than just a setting. It’s the seedbed of his cinematic imagination.
His latest film, Vicious, which held its world premiere at Austin’s Fantastic Fest on Sept. 19, brings his brand of psychological terror back to his home state, proving that the deepest chills can be found in the quietest corners of our own lives.
Bertino, who directed the 2008 cult classic The Strangers and the soul-shaking The Dark and the Wicked, has built a career on turning the mundane into the menacing. Before he became a celebrated filmmaker and studied cinematography at the University of Texas, he was a kid in Crowley, south of Fort Worth, whose worldview was shaped by the silver screen.
“The love I have for cinema began in that area,” Bertino says, his voice carrying the calm, thoughtful cadence of a natural storyteller. We’re sitting in the Fairmont Austin Hotel, the day after the roaring premiere at the Alamo Drafthouse. He reflects on his formative years with a clear fondness. “Seeing Pulp Fiction in the theater 14 times, I started gravitating towards movies and found video stores and different aspects that allowed me a world outside of Texas that I wasn’t certainly capable of seeing at that point.”
That curiosity blossomed into a unique cinematic voice, one that now presents us with Vicious. The film stars Dakota Fanning as Polly, a woman whose life is fractured by the arrival of a mysterious late-night visitor and a strange, insidious box. The premise is unnervingly simple: place three things inside — something you hate, something you need and something you love. What follows is a descent into a surreal nightmare where Polly’s reality, memories and sense of self begin to warp and decay. As one character chillingly warns, “You’re going to die tonight. Unless.”
The film has a grand sense of visual storytelling, where every frame is imbued with the protagonist’s internal struggle. The house itself becomes a character, its mirrors and cluttered foregrounds reflecting Polly’s fractured psyche. It’s a technique Bertino has honed, turning physical space into an emotional battleground.
“I wanted each item to signify some part of who she is or who she’s trying to be,” he explains. “In designing the house, we thought of it as another character, an extension of Polly.” This meticulous layering is intentional, a reward for the observant viewer. “I wanted to create something that not only had pieces that they would very easily see upon first glance, but then, hopefully, if somebody ever wanted to watch the movie again, you could start to notice other details.”
Polly’s journey is a harrowing exploration of self-doubt and existential dread. Early in the film, her voice trembles with a sentiment many can relate to: “I don’t want to be me. Is that a weird thing to say? It’s true. I’m so tired of feeling like none of it matters.” She’s a character adrift, caught between the expectations of others and her own faltering will. It’s this profound sense of being lost that makes the supernatural intrusion so potent. The entity that torments her knows her intimately, whispering, “We know everything about you. Everything you would never tell.”
For Bertino, the film is his most character-focused work to date. Every element is designed to pull the audience into Polly’s claustrophobic world, making her choices—and their consequences—feel devastatingly personal. “Everything in this movie we tried to make say something about [the character] more than any movie that I’ve ever done,” he says.
Bertino’s return to Texas for the premiere was a full-circle moment. Standing before a local crowd, he recalled his early days in Austin, “carrying cable and holding boom mics, just anything [he] could do to be involved in the process.” His journey from a wide-eyed UT student to a director premiering his work in the very city that shaped him is a testament to the power of a dream nurtured in Texas soil.
“It’s very cool for me now to get to come back and show something to this town,” he shared with the audience, “and hopefully some people might see what I do and also take something from it, because that’s really all you can ask for as a filmmaker.”
With Vicious, Bertino demands we look closer — at the screen, at the shadows in our own homes and at the fragile things we choose to hate, need and love. He holds a mirror up to our anxieties, crafting a chilling vision in the process.
Vicious will be available for streaming on Paramount+ starting Oct. 10.
