The Vicious Kind

Peter comes home for Thanksgiving and meets Emma, his brother's new girlfriend. He has just come out of his own relationship and every sentence he says about women is poisoned. While working to keep her away from his brother he becomes fixated on her. Their father is in the same house, and Peter has not spoken to him for years. The film is not interested in a love triangle. It is interested in a man presenting his own anger as a moral duty: Peter thinks he is warning Emma while dumping his own injury into someone else's life. The film does not vindicate him and leaves the audience uncomfortably alone with him. The form is small independent: winter, Connecticut, empty roads, sleepless nights. The camera is mostly on Peter's face. Lee Toland Krieger wrote and directed. The film screened at Sundance in 2009 and opened directing doors for him. Adam Scott plays Peter. He was known for comedy at the time, and this counts as his most striking work in an entirely different register; Brittany Snow plays Emma. Who it is for: viewers who like uncomfortable character studies and small independent drama. Who it is not for: anyone looking for sympathy. Peter speaks about women contemptuously throughout and some of it is hard to sit through.