Fantasia 2020 review: ‘For the Sake of Vicious’ is 80 minutes of pure brutality

The first virtual edition of Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival is here! In the coming days, we’ll be presenting capsule reviews of a number of films screening at the festival, filmmaker interviews, and much more. All of our 2020 Fantasia coverage can be found here. For the full schedule and tickets, head to the Fantasia screening site. 

There have been a handful of intensely violent films at Fantasia this year, but no other film can match the sheer brutal carnage of the appropriately-titled Canadian thriller For the Sake of Vicious.

Romina (Lora Burke) comes home after her nursing shift on Halloween night to find the inconsolable Chris (Nick Smyth), and his tied-up hostage Alan (Colin Paradine) set up in her kitchen. Chris is convinced Alan raped his daughter and is trying to extract a confession out of him by any means necessary, and needs Romina’s help to keep Alan alive. Amidst this madness, a gang of masked intruders on motorbikes begins attacking Romina’s home, forcing her to forge an unlikely alliance with Alan and Chris to combat this new and extremely dangerous threat.

Reminiscent of Dennis Villeneuve’s intense Prisoners crossed with The Night of the Living Dead, For the Sake of Vicious is a pulse-pounding adrenaline rush that never lets up over its concise 80-minute running time. Written and directed by Gabriel Carrer and Reese Eveneshen, the duo expertly pull together several threads here, from the mysterious assault that drives Chris’ unbridled anger to Alan’s complicated backstory, all while delivering a non-stop barrage of gruesome action in the film’s back half. This is not mere hyperbole — For the Sake of Vicious is like if the bloody finale of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood was stretched out into a feature-length film.

With strong performances from the three leads, a throbbing, nerve-racking soundtrack (also handled by Gabriel Carrer), and visceral moments of outright mayhem in one confined location, For the Sake of Vicious is a harrowing and cathartic exploration of the inner rage and violence most of us keep well under wraps.