Rating: C+
Dir: James Wan
Star: Annabelle Wallis, Maddie Hasson, George Young, Michole Briana White
Following up on our watch of Insidious, I wanted to check in on one of Wan’s non-franchise horror movies. While both ended up with the same rating, they got there in very different ways. I’d say Insidious is likely “better”, but I probably enjoyed Malignant more, especially the second half, which goes energetically over-the-top. There’s a famous quote: “Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels.” It’s wildly inaccurate: there’s a good case to be made, Astaire’s best routines were his solo work, and Fred was a master choreographer too. The quote might actually be more appropriately said, in regard to Gabriel and Madison, the antagonist and protagonist here respectively.
More explanation is probably unwise. For director Wan has explicitly said, “Knowing as little as possible about Malignant is the best way to go into the film.” This is why I’m padding the review out with a discussion of classic era Hollywood musicals. What I can say is, Madison Mitchell (Wallis) is being plagued by murderous visions depicting brutal deaths. These start with the victim being her abusive husband, and the problem is, the people in them are turning up dead, in exactly the way she saw. After Mr. Mitchell, the killer’s attention turns to various medical researchers. Might these people possibly be connected to Madison’s life, prior to being handed over to adoptive parents at age eight? At the request of Mr. Wan, I’ll say no more.
It’s clear to the viewer something supremely screwed-up is going on. Because we saw the opening sequence, a flashback to twenty-seven years earlier, when something ran amok in the research facility. We then have to wait for the next hour to find out what. This reveal comes courtesy of Maddie’s sister, Sydney Lake (Hasson). She sneaks into the abandoned establishment during a storm, which makes it look more like Dracula’s castle, built from plans provided by Evil Buildings Inc. Naturally, she is immediately able to find the storage box containing VHS tapes which explain everything. Most remarkably: in 2020, Sydney has a working VCR in her house. Of all the “I’m so sure” moments in the film – and it has some doozies – this might be the biggest stretch.
On the plus side, after this is when things enter berserk mode. In particular, the most impressive sequence of cop-shop mayhem since the original Terminator (top). Certainly puts a new spin on “I’ll be back,” hohoho, and plays like a gory version of Fred ‘n’ Ginger hoofing it in Top Hat. The second half feels as if Wan saw Basket Case, and thought, “Well, it was okay. Just too grounded and plausible.” It’s so much fun, I feel aggrieved we have an excessive wait for this to show up. There’s no reason this needs to be longer than, say, Re-Animator. Yet it runs for a whopping one hundred and sixteen minutes. Probably for the best it did not become a franchise, however.