James Wan is back, but not better than ever, as the director of another horror film, Malignant. The movie goes on a wild ride, initially it starts out with some typical horror tropes, but it does have a unique twist. The problem is that even though the twist is interesting, it just does not hit home like it should. One thing is for sure, it is a gore fest throughout, and at times it is hard to watch, but there was no real lasting scare like in The Conjuring or Insidious and no lasting important message either. (Spoilers ahead)
The film starts at a research hospital, where Gabriel has become too strong and starts to go on a rampage. Then it shifts to the modern day where Maddison is in an abusive relationship with her husband, who gets killed off quickly after he slams Maddison’s head into a wall. Then Maddison goes through experiences where she is seeing other murders committed in an out of body experience. Slowly the bodies start to add up, and the pieces come together, and all the evidence points to Maddison as the perpetrator, even though in the film, the killer is clearly some monstrous human taking revenge, who has extremely good parkour skills. So, although the authorities are convinced it is Maddison, it is unsure who the killer is, until the climax, when Maddison is in the holding cell. She rips open the back of her skull, and as this happens, her adopted family also realizes the horrible truth that some parasite, that Maddison was born with, was controlling her mind, and making her commit the murders.
This film was overly gory from the start. In the opening scene, there are injuries where bones end up breaking through the skin and people are being slashed. This quickly continues when they fast forward to the present day when Maddison's husband gets brutally murdered. He gets shoved against the wall and has his neck snapped in a sickening way, and there is a view of the result when the police come to investigate, not to mention that the husband had just slammed Maddison's skull against the wall causing her to bleed out of the back of her head. As the film continues, there are three more brutal one on one murders that Maddison "witnesses." The murder weapon is an incredibly sharp blade fashioned out of a medical trophy, which was a clever choice as the weapon. Then as the film climaxes, and we realize Maddison and Gabriel are the same person, she escapes from the holding cell in one of, if not the most, graphic, and gory scenes of the film. The back of Maddison's skull is opened, and Gabriel's face emerges. Then the ass whooping commences. All the ladies in the cell get either killed or maimed. Next Gabriel takes on the whole police precinct, which is more of an action movie scene than a horror film one. Part of the scene seems almost completely animated. It does not look real at all, but then it returns to normal action. It is a fast-paced slash fest, but it ends with a very comical note, when Gabriel throws a chair across the whole precinct and knocks over two cops with absurd accuracy.
So, in Insidious and The Conjuring, it is a more supernatural horror, whereas this is closer to a slasher, but not quite like Wan's other film, Saw. Saw has a ton of gore as well, but it is due to contraptions, and it is with early 2000s graphics, so the blood and gore in this film was much more realistic in Malignant. It initially seems like it will lean more in the vein of The Conjuring and Insidious, there is a dark presence that creeps around in the shadows, and it only makes itself known at night mostly, but then as the film continues, this is no demonic possession or ghost causing these tragedies, it is just a disgusting parasite attached to the back of this poor woman's body. It is incredibly gross, and at no point did I enjoy looking at it. It initially seems like a Grudge or The Ring like figure with the long black hair cast over the face, but then the real face comes to the surface in a disturbing revelation.
The only real lasting effects of this movie will come from the excellent cinematography. One of the most famous shots in horror comes from tracking shots, where the camera follows a character along and goes through walls, where the character is momentarily gone then reappears in the next room. The film that really made this famous is The Shining. This film added an excellent twist to the tracking shot, they did it from the ceiling this time. As Maddison made a run for it from her back door all the way up to her bedroom, the camera followed along from the roof, the only thing that was missing was a sinister figure chasing her. It really seemed like in the shot that she was running from nothing, there were competing footsteps with hers, but there was no malignant form. It was still an amazing shot. There were a few other tracking shots that worked well, but this one was the marque.
One of the strangest arguments of this film came from the strength of Gabriel. He was clearly much stronger and more athletic than Maddison. He was able to do some insane parkour. He flung himself down a fire escape with insane precision, and then he continued to hop and jump around and through holes in the wall with the agility of a monkey swinging from vine to vine. Then, when it comes to the strength aspect, the ability Gabrielle had with the knife was inhuman. Even if the knife was incredibly sharp, the slicing ability he had where it just slid through people like butter is not possible. Finally, there was the chair thrown across the room and the hospital bed flip. Both were equally absurd. Then to add on top of it, to show that Gabriel really was not in charge, they have Maddison pick up the bed off her sister, because the strength was inside of her the whole time, but this clearly could not have been true. When she was Gabriel, the forensic team said the kill was only possible if the killer was hanging from the ceiling, which is impossible.
If there was any kind of moral, theme or lesson that this film was trying to preach to, it probably had to do with mental illness. For a large part of the film, Maddison is viewed as crazy. The police do not believe what she is seeing, and she came from a research hospital where the scientists tried to convince her that the voice, she was hearing was not real. There is legitimate concern that she almost tried to kill her adopted mom when she was pregnant, so clearly there was not a ton of trust and belief in Maddison, even though in the end, she was kind of right. So put more faith in people and do not solely judge them because what they are saying might sound completely insane. Also, domestic violence is bad, because that is what caused Gabriel to resurface.
Just like all horror films, this leaves an opening for a sequel. I personally hope that there is not a sequel, because then I will have to watch another one of these, and this one was already not compelling, so add in the typical lessening of quality from a sequel, and that would make for a very bad movie. I really wanted to love this film. After watching the trailer, I was spooked, but there was not really any moment in which I was scared watching the film, and part of this could have come from the big miss in the soundtrack, they kept playing some weird song at moments that just took me out of the experience, whereas in The Night House, the music really drew me in to the story. Hopefully James Wan's next endeavor gets back to his other horror origins and he will create another terrifying film soon. I give this 2.5 Stars.
Other Movies This Week:
Event Horizon has been missing for seven years, and now it has been found, but there are no survivors and something more sinister lurking in the shadows. The film starts out strong and is incredibly creepy, but it simmers towards the end. At times this film is visually disturbing, and other times it's chilling, but it moved too far away from what was working.
The Matrix is set in a dystopian universe where what appears to be normal life is all a simulation, and the real world is in ruins with humans in chambers. Some of it holds up to today, but some of the graphics were a little cheesy. Overall, it was fine, but I was not blown away.
Movie Rankings:
Malignant: 2.5 Stars
Event Horizon: 3.5 stars
The Matrix: 3 Stars
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