Why Dakota Fanning’s Survivor Ending in Vicious Isn’t a Clean Break, According to Bryan Bertino

Director Bryan Bertino, who wrote and directed the 2025 horror film Vicious, explained the movie’s ending and what it means for Dakota Fanning’s character Polly. He described the final state as survival that comes with ongoing consequences, and linked the film’s structure to his own experience with anxiety.

Ending explained
The box and Polly’s choice
Bertino’s personal influence
Tara and consequences
Cinematic nod
Where to watch

Ending explained

In the final sequence, Polly is alive but changed. She stands on a road, hears a phone ringing, and understands the threat will keep returning. Importantly, the movie shows that she can refuse the fear and ignore the calls, yet the demands continue in the background.

Bryan Bertino said: “I certainly think that at the end of the day, this movie has a lightness that some of my movies haven’t.” He also framed the ending as an acknowledgment that “you’re never really going to escape things, so you just have to keep going.”

The box and Polly’s choice

The film centers on a mysterious box delivered to Polly by a stranger. After the box arrives, a force calls her phone repeatedly and orders sacrifices. As the plot progresses, Polly tries to pass the box on and even forces it on a young woman named Tara.

By the end, Polly learns two concrete facts: giving the box to someone else doesn’t fully sever its connection to her, and she has the ability to ignore its calls if she refuses to be ruled by fear. Consequently, her survival is not a clean break — it’s a new way of living with the problem.

Bertino’s personal influence

Bertino spoke about how his own mental health informed the movie. He said: “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.”

Moreover, he explained his goal for the film’s sensory approach: “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.” In short, the movie aims to make viewers feel the intensity of anxiety rather than just describe it.

Tara and consequences

Tara (played by Devyn Nekoda) answers Polly’s door when Polly tries to offload the box. Polly briefly attempts to reclaim the box later, taking responsibility for what she passed on. However, Tara denies knowing what Polly means, and remains locked into the box’s demands.

On-screen evidence shows Tara has already followed the box’s instructions, including murdering her parents and painting bloody warnings on walls. Bertino summarized this arc plainly: “In the very end of the movie, Tara is locked in her own thing.”

Cinematic nod

Bertino said the film’s final beats deliberately reference Tobe Hooper’s 1974 movie The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. He pointed to that film’s battered survivor as a model for Polly’s state after surviving extreme trauma.

As Bertino put it: “I always think about her in the back of the truck, screaming. She has survived and she has won, in that sense. But survival at what cost? And I feel like with Polly — yeah, she’s standing in the road, on some level. She’s changed forever, just as we all are by our different traumas.”