This film is bonkers. I felt like I was watching a Giallo or 80s low budget B-movie if it were competently made and given a massive budget.
This is a horror movie the way they used to be. Unpredictable, insane, gross-out, freak out stuff. It's not a movie made by a committee, it's not the usual haunted doll or spooky house movie where the narrative grinds to a halt as you wait for the inevitable loud noise jump scare when someone looks into a mirror or closes a door.
And it's not the joyless, ugly torture porn that has plagued the genre in recent decades either. Nor is it a wink-wink self-referential Scream type parody either.
Malignant plays it relatively straight for much of its runtime, presenting a genuinely intriguing mystery and a scary, seemingly supernatural killer.
But when the third act happens (you'll know when it does), the film goes completely off the rails. In one of the most over the top sequences ever, Malignant embraces its silly concept and goes all out action gore-fest. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, and ended up laughing my butt off. The last time a movie completely flipped the script like this was From Dusk Till Dawn. Here the twist actually makes sense in terms of the narrative. The story - while stupid - is surprisingly coherent.
That's the secret sauce to many horror classics. Take a dumb, disgusting or bonkers concept, and fully commit to it. It may not please focus groups, but it's how you make a cult movie that remains memorable.
What a breath of fresh air. Thank you, James Wan. This was beautiful.
