By William Bibbiani

If I’ve learned anything from watching Bryan Bertino movies it’s that I should never, ever open my door. For anybody. Sorry, trick ‘r treaters, you’ll have to ply your trade elsewhere. Sorry, pizza delivery person, I’m not falling for that old gag. Sorry, Publisher’s Clearing House, I don’t need a million dollars that badly … Wait! No! I was kidding! It was just an opening paragraph gag, I… aw, dang it. Thanks, Bryan Bertino. Thanks a bunch.

Well, I just lost a million dollars and I’m feeling blue, so let’s talk about “Vicious,” Bertino’s latest horror movie about being blue, which also presumably cost some money. You may remember Bertino as the writer/director of “The Strangers” — the good one from 2008, not the Renny Harlin reboots. In “The Strangers,” a marriage proposal goes wrong, so Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman are bitter and miserable, which was bad enough even before the masked murderers arrived. Literal insult met literal injury. And why did they attack our heavy-hearted heroes in the first place? No reason. Just because they were home.