Vicious

Polly’s night of terror ends when the cursed black box finally exhausts its power—not by the sacrifices it demanded, but by Polly’s refusal to surrender her loved ones. After the mysterious old woman leaves the box and an hour‑glass that begins to count down, Polly is told she must place something she hates, something she needs, and something she loves inside it.

She first tries to offer a pack of cigarettes, but the box rejects it; she cannot truly hate the habit she wants to quit. She then coughs up a key to a drawer of photos and a crucifix that belonged to her dead father—objects that embody the grief she has never allowed herself to confront. The box accepts these, forcing Polly to cut off a finger and a toe as “something she needs,” a literal and brutal act meant to make the sand stop.

When the spirits demand “something she loves,” they conjure a nightmarish vision of her sister Lainie and niece Aly dead, pressing Polly to cut them from her life. Polly resists, opting instead to offer a single strand of Aly’s hair. The sand keeps flowing, and the visions grow more deceptive, showing her that even the blood she bleeds into the box will not end the countdown.

Realizing the curse is less about the offerings and more about the box’s compulsive need to be passed on, Polly tracks down a stranger, Tara, and tries to hand the box over. Tara refuses, claiming she never saw Polly—another manipulation that shows the box can rewrite memory. The box, however, snaps back to Polly’s house; the old woman who first delivered it is now dying, having lost an eye and attempting to kill Polly before she can be taken. In her dying breath she admits the box chooses its victims, seeking out broken people whose weaknesses it can exploit.

Polly survives the old woman’s attack, and when the film’s final sequence reveals her sister’s home, Lainie and Aly are alive, the house only slightly untidy—proof that some of the night’s horrors were hallucinations. Polly bears a scar on her face, a missing finger and toe, physical reminders that the sacrifices were real even if the timeline was imagined. The hour‑glass continues to tick, and the box ultimately ends up with Tara, suggesting the cycle will begin anew.

In the end, Polly’s triumph lies not in halting the timer but in refusing to become the box’s pawn. She chooses to live with the pain and the marks, confronting her own failures and reclaiming agency over a curse that wanted her to betray everything she values. The film closes on her lighting a cigarette, a phone vibrating with an unseen call she deliberately ignores—an open‑ended reminder that the horror may linger, but she will no longer submit to it.

Last Updated: December 10, 2025 at 15:57