The Vicious Kind: Critic Reviews

The characters spend far too much time working through their problems with drama-deadening directness.

Indie drama reveals talent in front of and behind the camera.

The Vicious Kind upends the heavily tread dysfunctional family drama in ways that are unique, surprising and memorable.

Vicious Kind doesn't have much in the way of new corners to offer the domestic disturbance genre, resulting in a film greatly dedicated to misery, but offers no tangible reason why anyone outside of the filmmaker should care.

It's the sort of Sundance-approved movie that takes place in a stereotypically bleak rural locale, while an acoustic guitar twangs mournfully over the soundtrack.

What lifts this trenchant dramedy out of the ordinary are Krieger's ear for dialogue and Adam Scott's breakthrough performance as a family's black sheep seemingly intent on earning that bad rap.

Inevitably, the film devolves into weepy catharsis, but with slick cinematography and colorfully cruel dialogue for Scott to chew up and spit at every member of this fine ensemble.

In a sharply scripted comic drama, Brittany Snow stars as the pensive Emma, a girl caught between two quite different brothers.

What initially seems like a [Neil] LaBute knockoff develops into its own rather interesting examination of men who mask pain with maliciousness.