The Vicious Kind (2009)

I don't know why imdb lists this as a comedy. It's pretty good, but not one bit funny! It's intense and cruel, with a few similarities to Mike Nichols' Closer (2004): there's a lot of mean-spiritedness, there are four main characters, Natalie Portman wears a pink wig in Closer and I'm pretty sure Brittany Snow is wearing a jet black one in Vicious Kind. Snow has come a long way from the Aryan princess Amber von Tussle in Hairspray (2007) and other teen roles, and here she plays Emma, the apparently vapid girlfriend of Peter (Alex Frost, who was featured in Gus Van Sant's Elephant (2003), an ensemble piece set in a high school on the eve of a Columbine-type event). J.K. Simmons (I just wrote about him in Up in the Air) is great as always as Donald, Peter and Caleb's father, and gets more to do in this movie than usual. But the heavy lifting goes to Adam Scott (half of one of the unhappy and desperate couples in HBO's Tell me You Love Me, plus a long list of more credits), whose unhappy and desperate Caleb is a misogynist and misanthrope--he just hates everyone, particularly himself.

This is writer/director Lee Toland Krieger's first feature. He started as an assistant to Neil LaBute, who, to me, is a master of mean (In the Company of Men (1997), Your Friends & Neighbors (1998), The Shape of Things (2003), Lakeview Terrace) and served as an executive producer on this one. It won 4 film festival awards and has been nominated for two Independent Spirits, for Scott's acting and for Krieger's screenplay. Shot on location in snowy Connecticut, I was moved to look up that state's smoking laws, as Caleb always has a cigarette in his mouth. Either it was shot before October 1, 2003, or they decided to ignore the trends and have him smoke on private sets. Not a happy holiday picture (perhaps the title was a tip-off?), this is a slice of a seriously dysfunctional life and I suggest you arrange to do something fun after you see it, if you do.