What is it about Thanksgiving?

#18: The Vicious Kind

Thanksgiving is apparently the American holiday that captures the zeitgeist of damaged families better than any other. Perhaps it is because it is so brief, there are no twelve days of Thanksgiving. Maybe because it ushers in the season of mandatory nostalgia and memories of holidays gone sideways. For whatever reason, just invoking the Thursday in November serves up images of concentrated family dysfunction. In The Vicious Kind the family consists of a father and his two grown (or nearly grown) sons. This Thanksgiving the younger son, Peter, is bringing his sorority-goth girlfriend home from college to meet his marginally lecherous father, played by J.K. Simmons.

The center of the film is the older brother Caleb, played by a very charming Adam Scott. Chain smoking and an aficionado of classic diners, Caleb picks up his brother and begins to try to convince him that his new girlfriend is a very bad idea. One gets the sense that, to Caleb, all women are a very bad idea. His anti-social behavior does not improve once the girlfriend has joined them in the front seat of Caleb's pickup wherein he sets out to prove that all women are sluts. Oh, and for some reason Caleb can't be seen near his fathers house.

This movie is part mystery, part comedy, as we set about figuring out slowly what is wrong with this family. Of course the good girl/bad girl/good girl girlfriend recognizes that boring but safe Peter is no match for unpredictable and sleepless Caleb and Caleb, trying to protect his little brother from the inevitable heartbreak of his first love, becomes obsessed with the girl himself. But the sex triangle is really secondary to the larger story of how one broken family got that way and how redemption is available but not guaranteed. This film is light on exposition and the mystery unravels slowly but its resolution is organic and fulfilling.

The best part of this film is the misanthropic and misogynistic Caleb and brutal take on life. His monologues are snappy and his performance is a pitch-perfect mix of arrogance and bewilderment; he thinks he has women figured out only to discover that he has no control over his emotions just the same. This conflict is told mostly through subtle shifts in tone and posture that doesn't quite comport with the words coming out of his mouth. This role is a high wire act. In the wrong hands Caleb is just an asshole. As handled by Scott he's one of those charming assholes.