Malignant is a hard film to describe without going into spoiler-tastic territory. On the surface, it’s a harrowing tale of a woman caught up in a series of gruesome murders, steadily losing her mind. But as James Wan’s two-hour, supernatural crime thriller slowly (very slowly) unfolds, Malignant suddenly becomes an ultra-violent body horror with an extremely disarming twist nestled just under the skin.
As that description might suggest, Malignant is also a hard film to pin down, genre-wise. It’s broadly a horror film and kicks off in the way you’d expect from the architect of The Conjuring franchise: Annabelle’s Annabelle Wallis stars as Madison, a pregnant woman who loses her unborn child after her partner – characterised in the most black-and-white ‘he’s a deadbeat’ way imaginable – shoves her into their bedroom wall. He suffers a grisly death shortly after at the hands of an entity that appears to be ghostly.
With no signs of forced entry, the two detectives investigating his death (the very likeable pairing of George Young and Michele Briona White) can only conclude Madison is perhaps to blame, likely retaliating for the injuries she sustained from him, injuries that won’t properly heal. Hmm, mysterious! Of course, both we (the audience) and Madison know there’s more going on than meets the human eye, but as the body count continues to pile up around her, she becomes painted as an increasingly untrustworthy narrator, hammered home hard by the Where Is My Mind? music stings. Hmm, even more mysterious!
This mystery falls apart, however, because Malignant ends up having one too many misdirects that become plot holes. It’s also far too long to keep the tension ramped up and its pacing suffers because of this. Three-quarters of the film feels less like a taut haunted house drama, a la Wan’s first and pretty solid Conjuring movie, and more like a strange blend of Criminal Minds meets Spawn. When it does reveal the truly ugly truth, things ratchet up again, but there’s certainly a sense of a singular, weird idea being stretched far too thin to support its bloated runtime. The things that do work particularly well are Wan’s inventive camera angles, Susperia-influenced colour palette and the aforementioned body horror elements. The physicality of the mysterious, curtain-haired killer is appropriately squeamish yet mesmerising, looking a bit like the Babadook doing an advanced yoga workout.
It’s the style – and some of the substance – that stops Malignant from being subpar, B-movie fare and instead, elevated B-movie fare. It won’t keep you up at night gripped by terror, but the idea of an avenging, dark creature in an overcoat parkouring backwards down buildings might make you wonder if Wan has accidentally created a brand new, adult superhero franchise to compete with Marvel‘s Venom.
Dir. James Wan (18, 111 mins)
Out now in cinemas and available for Home Premiere through Amazon Prime Video. Info: here.
words HANNAH COLLINS
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