Playing in Theaters and Streaming on HBO Max through October 10.
James Wan is one of two modern directors who knows how to deliver the goods to horror cinema (the other director is Mike Flannigan). Starting out as an established master of chiller-horror cinema with films like Saw, Insidious, and The Conjuring, James Wan contributed to the reinvigoration of horror cinema in a time when cheap jump-scares and lackluster writing continue to be the norm. Later into his career, James Wan would dip his toes into directing action blockbusters such as Furious 7 and Aquaman, with mostly successful results. While James Wan is also noted for utilizing jump-scares, unlike most other modern horror films, he knows how to use them properly and is not overly reliant upon them. Even when he's rendering superheroes underwater and flying high-speed cars through skyscrapers, he's still a genuine horror director through and through.
With a few successful horror franchises under his belt, James Wan decided to create a new experimental horror film inspired by Italian Giallo novels and movies from the 1970s: complete with a vivid color palette, a killer clad in a dark coat with black leather gloves wielding a unique bladed weapon, and a gothic castle-hospital for unusual medical research. The end result is a film that can't decide what it wants to be, as it struggles between being a psychological thriller, an homage to Italian exploitation horror cinema, and an action vehicle for a clever monster concept. It feels like James Wan tried to combine his recently successful efforts in action cinema with his horror roots, and it doesn't really work.
The story follows Madison Mitchell (Annabelle Wallis), a nurse with an abusive boyfriend and unfortunate experiences with miscarriages. One day, after having her head bashed into a wall by the aforementioned boyfriend, she locks herself in the bedroom and goes to sleep bleeding from the back of the head. The next day, she wakes up to find her boyfriend mysteriously and gratuitously murdered. Not long after that, she begins having strange visions of similar murders perpetrated by a dark figure calling himself Gabriel: a deadly humanoid being who can somehow control electricity and dressed in a long black coat with his face concealed by long dark hair, wielding a blade made from one of his first victim's medical awards, who was a doctor of some kind.
After approaching the police about her visions, Madison discovers that the victims have a mysterious connection to her. She was adopted at age eight and does not remember anything before then. As Gabriel continues his killing spree with Madison as a helpless spectator, she and her sister Sydney (Maddie Hasson) investigate the mysterious connection between her and Gabriel. What they discover will send their spines tingling in more ways than one.
The biggest problem with the film is that it's not as clever as it clearly wants to think it is (which I'll elaborate on more in a moment), nor can the film decide if it wants to be serious or campy. The tone jumps back and forth between over-the-top silliness like most Nightmare on Elm Street sequels and grounded seriousness like John Carpenter's The Thing, but without any sense of balance or sturdy transition between the two. Scenes meant to be scary come off as unintentionally funny, and the lack of explanation for the more supernatural aspects of the story makes it less intimidating or even interesting. While I believe that not every aspect of a story needs to be explained, as sometimes a lack thereof can make something more engaging, the idea of a villain who can control electricity to the point where he can project his voice through radios and cell phones implies some kind of fascinating backstory that deserves more thought than what was put into it here.
Even with all of that, none of these issues are as crippling to the film as its main plot twist, which almost shouldn't count as a twist because of how dumbfoundedly easy it is to predict within the first five minutes of the film, if not during the opening credits sequence.
To illustrate my point, I need to provide SPOILERS. As per my usual practice, if you would still prefer to avoid spoilers and try the movie for yourself, avoid any text written in Red.
SPOILERS
Okay, so it turns out that Madison's real name is Emily. Her biological mother was a fifteen-year-old rape survivor forced to carry the child to term and surrender her to a medical research hospital. As it turns out, Emily was born with a parasitic twin brother named Gabriel conjoined at Emily's back and skull with nothing more than a pair of malformed arms and a severely misshaped face. This caused Emily and Gabriel to share the same brain, allowing Emily to see what Gabriel sees and granting Gabriel the ability to take over Emily's body & mind at will. Not only that, Gabriel is completely and purely evil with no qualms towards violence. He can also drink and manipulate electricity which is never explained.
After years of trying to help both Emily and Gabriel, it was finally decided that Gabriel was too evil and dangerous to remain alive. Therefore, the doctors surgically removed Gabriel's body from Emily's back, save for parts of his face due to his link to Emily's brain. They shoved Gabriel into Emily's skull and, through various methods, repressed Emily's knowledge and memories of Gabriel.
At first, it seemed to work. However, Gabriel remained a strong and manipulative presence in Emily's mind, to the point where he tried to make her kill her baby sister before she was born. Fortunately, Gabriel failed, and after Emily's sister was born, along with the love and support from her foster parents, Gabriel was pushed back into the deep recesses of Emily's mind. That is until years later when her abusive boyfriend bashed her head against the wall, thereby waking Gabriel up, allowing him to completely take over Emily's body at will and carry out his revenge. Furthermore, it also turns out that Gabriel was responsible for Emily's miscarriages, as he was feeding on her fetuses for strength. It's about as stupid as it sounds.
This is where the problem with the film's twist lies. Throughout the film, Gabriel's physical presence is clearly the body of a woman with long hair that is incredibly similar to our main heroines. Plus, the opening flashback, along with the various images presented in the opening credits, make it abundantly clear that some kind of surgery has been performed on our heroine, thereby making it too obvious that the twist somehow involves a conjoined twin.
Maybe if the parasitic twin turned out to be the result of Emily's biological "father" being an alien or perhaps the Greek god Zeus (which would have explained Gabriel's supernatural agility and control over electricity), the opening scene and credits sequence could have been forgiven for making the twist so blatant. Alternatively, if the film had simply opened with the inciting incident of Emily's head getting caved in by her abusive boyfriend and had a more minimal opening credits sequence, then the twist might have been significantly more impactful than it actually was.
Malignant is a film that's too action-packed to be scary, too reliant upon overdone tropes & cliches to be clever, and too excited over its own ideas to develop them properly. While there are aspects of the film I do appreciate and admire: such as the gorgeous cinematography, special effects, and the convicted work of talented contortionists' Marina Mazepa and Troy James in bringing the film's monster to life, it's sadly not enough for me to give this film a passing grade. If you're the least bit curious, by all means, give it a shot. Otherwise, I recommend any of James Wan's earlier works if you're looking for a decent scare. Insidious would be a great place to start.
Ladies & gentlemen, I am TheNorm; thank you all for reading.
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