PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Imagine coming home after a fitful day of work, and seeing your landlord sprawled out, attacked on your kitchen floor, as you come face-to-face with an unknown assailant. That’s the gripping beginning to For The Sake Of Vicious, and it only gets more intense from there. From the tension-filled opening through the eighty-minute runtime, the viewer is guided through a litany of questions and macabre scenarios. Let’s break down For The Sake Of Vicious and see what those outcomes hold.
For The Sake Of Vicious is written and directed by Gabriel Carrer (The Demolisher 2015) and Reese Eveneshen (Defective 2017). The premise is that a man has another man captive, intending to punish him for allegedly raping his child. The captive man is the landlord of a woman, whose house serves as the setting that puts her in the middle. The wrong-place, wrong-time woman is Romina, played by Lora Burke (Lifechanger 2018), and she lends a wonderful moral high ground to balance out the intensity. The avenging father is Chris, played by Nick Smyth (Motherly 2020), and the accused rapist is Alan, played by Colin Paradine (Inspiration 2016). The acting is truly the shining star of this film, as these three all have depth and clear intent in their characters. Watching the chemistry interplay between the three, the strong actors keep the audience invested in the potential outcome of this fatal standoff.
For The Sake Of Vicious uses minimalism (a small principal cast and one location) to highlight the strength of its story. While the prose is simple, it’s time tested and the dialogue and emotion are done very believably. The flaws in this film only start to come out when we get a twist in the second act. While this twist brings more tension and action, some of its scenes feel drawn out and repetitive. While this film was short, it may have been even more effective in the range of twenty to forty minutes. While For The Sake Of Vicious comes to a full conclusion, some of the motives of the antagonists leave a bit to the imagination. But overall, this movie is an easy watch with a darkly relatable story. It contains some of the same emotion and containment fear that made films like The Strangers (read our editorial on this film here) so special. This horror-thriller hit Select Theaters April 16, On Demand April 20, and releases on Blu-ray on May 4.
