Written by Akela Cooper
Directed by James Wan
Starring Annabelle Wallis, Maddie Hasson, George Young and Michola Briana White
USA, 2021
As soon as I heard Paul Scheer and co. discussing MALIGNANT on their podcast "How Did This Get Made," I knew I had to see it. Without that, I would have probably passed on it as just another of those modern one-vocab-word-titled horror movies that get pretty good reviews and audiences like even though I don't end up being into them. You know like SINISTER and INSIDIOUS and uh... those other ones. You know the ones.
But, the "How Did This Get Made" crew did me a favor and filled me in on the plot secrets of MALIGNANT, and they were so insane, I knew the movie must be for me. Now, some people probably prefer it the other way around -- they don't want anything spoiled going into the movie. And I can be that way, sometimes. Then again, you might catch me blowing hard about how, "If the movie is any good no spoiler can ruin it," like I did when I went to see THE SIXTH SENSE with a buddy who had seen it before and told him to reveal the ending to me before I went in.
The spoiler-free version of this movie's premise is that a young woman, after suffering several miscarriages and waking up to find her abusive husband murdered, has murderous visions that seem to match actual murders happening at the same time, elsewhere in the city. Who's doing the killing, why's she having visions, is she the murderer? Without spoiling anything, there are off-the-wall explanations for all of this, and while they may not be satisfying in al logical sense, they are extremely satisfying in a "I have literally never seen anything like this" sense, which is something I look for and admire in movies. Add to that the fact that the movie has generally memorable characters and scenes and deals with a little more in the way of character development than it really has to, and you've got a solid, if schlocky, time waster.
Now, if you don't want to hear the cool part, this is where you stop reading. If you do, check this out: turns out the woman having these visions was born with a parasitic twin. And we're not talking about like a clump of cells that form a tumor with a tooth and some hair, we're talking about a toddler-sized half-formed person sticking out of the back of her head. For reasons unexplored, this parasitic twin is evil, and after being studied a few years in her childhood, this woman is surgically separated from the twin, with the remains of the twin that cannot be safely removed stuffed back into her skull and sewn up. She's adopted by a family we're supposed to think is normal (though they rename her at the age of seven or eight or something, which feels kind of messed up) and goes about the rest of her life forgetting all about this stuff. Until, of course, her parasitic twin (inexplicably named Gabriel) wakes up and goes on a vengeance-fueled killing spree.
If that's not weird enough, when Gabriel takes over the young woman's body, he basically turns it inside out. Well, that's not right, more like... backwards. Since Gabriel faces out the back of her body, he has her walk backwards and bend her limbs backwards and stuff. Gabriel also has super powered strength, so it's like John Wick or the Matrix every time he goes out to do some killing -- this is never explained, which is the movie's second-biggest flaw. Gabriel also has the powers to manipulate electricity and electrical devices, which is also sort of not explained, except that he and his host body have undergone electro-shock therapy before, so maybe that has something to do with it. Thing is, the movie would have been a perfectly fine horror movie without the super strength or electrical powers, so I'm not sure why they're even included. But, that's only a minor quibble.
Another minor quibble, and the first-biggest flaw of the movie, is that it suffers from being simply too slick. The production value is so high and the movie is so overly produced that it kinda takes away from the scares. Every set is huge and overdone and the lighting is very "look at me! I'm lit!" That's not to say James Wan is a bad director -- he's not. The movie just would have probably been a little more effective if it was a little more rough around the edges, or even just more plain. Like, make the police station look like a police station, not the set of a police station in a $300 million movie.
But, I digress. The point is this movie is crazy and you need to see it.
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