After a brief but tantalizingly pulpy opening, Malignant settles into a first act that will feel overly familiar to anyone who's well-versed in modern horror movies. Light bulbs buzz and flicker as characters move around a darkly lit Gothic house. Empty, unassuming spaces linger at the edge of the frame just waiting to filled by some otherworldly creature that will surely spring up any moment. As crafted by director James Wan, the man responsible for the Saw, Insidious and Conjuring franchises, it's all immaculately assembled but also a bit rote — horror filmmaking via cold math as each anxiety-producing angle seems composed by algorithm. And then, sometime well before the movie hits its halfway point, Wan pulls the rug out from under anyone who had already written Malignant off as just another Conjuring variant. In retrospect, maybe that first act was designed to lull you into a place of complacency, so you wouldn't feel the need to prepare for what comes next. And, trust me, you will not be prepared for what comes next. I know I wasn't. And I couldn't be fucking happier about it.
Malignant is the best horror film I've seen in years because it is also the most fun horror movie I've seen in years. It is both viscerally brutal and engagingly campy. It is preposterous in the best of ways. Once it gets going, it does not hold back for one second, not ever. It has echoes of Dario Argento and Stuart Gordon and David Cronenberg and other ghosts of horror past. It owes a large narrative debt to a certain book by a certain Maine-born horror master that I will not name here because I wouldn't dare ruin a single thing about this film's story. But Wan grinds his influences up so completely and effortlessly that he has produced something that feels new and wonderful. And also just dementedly sick. Malignant is one sick movie, but like all the best horror movies, it's sick in a way that had me cackling all the way to the end credits. It's a thrill-ride that's really just getting started once your brain has acknowledged that it can't believe what it's seeing.
Again, I don't want to get too much into the plot because the best way to experience this movie is to go in cold. What I will tell you is that Annabelle Wallis plays Maddie, a thirty-something woman who's had a lot of trauma in her life. She has suffered several miscarriages, and her husband abuses her. After his latest attack leaves her bloodied, the couple are targeted by a mysterious entity that seems to be of supernatural origin. Before long, a series of murders across the city leads police investigators back to Maddie, who's been having visions of the killings. At some point, you may start to assemble the basics of what's actually happening before the big reveals come, but, even if you do, you will have no idea how far out there Wan, along with his co-writers Ingrid Bisu and Akela Cooper, are willing to go with the concepts in play.
And what's more, there's so much brilliant craft on display among the craziness! Wan is a master, and he and his cinematographer, Michael Burgess, move the camera in ways that are seductive and riveting. There's a tracking shot from directly overhead that follows Maddie as she moves, room by room, from the first level of her house to the second that is breathtaking. There is a monstrous killer in Malignant unlike any you've seen before — a leaping, whirling demon that answers the question: "What if Jason Vorhees knew parkour?" This killer carries a custom weapon that is instantly iconic. All of the design and effects work is incredible. There is a castle-like hospital sitting on a moonlit cliff that I want to make my new desktop background. Everything about this movie screams: "We love horror movies. You love horror movies. Let's have some fun together."
Malignant will not be for everyone. If you prefer your horror to be overly serious, this is not a movie for you. If you prefer your horror to feel prestigious with world-class acting and deep reservoirs of character development, this is not a movie for you. Early on, I was actually ready to knock the movie for its stiff and not entirely convincing performances. But as the film went on, I grew to think they were necessary so the characters wouldn't feel too out of place amongst or distract from the insanity that consumes the movie's second half. Am I giving Wan too much credit here? Maybe! But it's an easy argument to make when the movie ends up working so completely once it arrives at its final form.
But if you're someone who appreciates that one of horror's biggest advantages is that it can go as batshit crazy as it wants, then you're going to appreciate what Wan has done here. Coming off the extravagant superhero smash Aquaman, which could have set him up to direct big-budget tentpoles for life, Wan has instead returned to his genre roots where he is free to give absolutely zero fucks. And trust me when I tell you that, with Malignant, no fucks are given. Every bizarre and perverse notion the filmmaking team had is there on screen to be thrilled by, laughed at, and marveled over. This is a horror film for the ages — gruesome and frenzied and fabulous — and it serves as a delectable reminder of why I fell in love with the genre in the first place.
