Malignant
WARNER BROSAfter crafting two of the most successful horror franchises of our time and directing two-billion-dollar blockbusters, genre legend James Wan returns to his horror roots with Malignant, a Giallo-infused thriller with one of the best third act twists in recent memory. It tells the story of Madison Mitchell (Annabelle Wallis), who begins to have visions of serial killings happening in her hometown.
In perfect Eyes of Laura Mars fashion, Madison is thwarted smack-bang where the murder will take place and sees that the killer is her imaginary friend named Gabriel, who has been in her mind since she was a little girl (Mckenna Grace plays scenes with young Madison). Of course, the two detectives investigating the murders, Kekoa Shaw (George Young) and Regina Moss (Michole Briana White), do not believe her and think she is the killer, but a shocking revelation will bring Madison closer to Gabriel than anyone ever thought possible.
During the first fifty minutes of Malignant, Wan establishes the intrigue with a clichéd tribute to Giallo pictures of the 1970s and 1980s. The visual cues from Dario Argento’s Deep Red and Irvin Kershner’s “disco Giallo” Eyes of Laura Mars are immediately found here, as it gradually builds up to a third act no one is expecting. The exposition part where Madison’s tormented state worsens and Gabriel’s frenetic and unhinged killings are established is essential for the third act twist to work, as it gradually pulls the audience into the film’s sick and twisted world for its cymbal drop of a reveal to work. Heck, it is so conventionally made that when the “reveal” happens, audible gasps may be heard from the audience and change the film's entire course from a hyper-stylised supernatural thriller to one of the bloodiest and zaniest concoctions of the new decade. And it does. The more Malignant demonstrates its demented aesthetic, through warps in time that blurs the lines between reality and fiction and a penchant for ultraviolent scenes of murders, the further the audience starts to become prisoners of Wan’s mastery of convention-breaking horror and become more susceptible to like whatever he is going to throw at whoever is watching.
Annabelle Wallis gives the best performance of her career in Madison. She mixes the ferocity of Asia Argento’s Anna in her father’s The Stendhal Syndrome and the paranoia-ridden state of Faye Dunaway’s Laura Mars in a tribute to some of Giallo cinema’s most complex female protagonists. As she descends into a state of complete madness as nobody believes her – even the friendly detective Kekoa, until he has an altercation with Gabriel – the audience starts to relate to her and feel for her plight, even though it is highly improbable that an “imaginary friend” would commit a series of murders. However, that changes quickly once the secret of Gabriel’s “existence” gets revealed and Wan does what he does best: oddly satisfying cathartic cinema.
During the final act of Aquaman, Wan throws quite literally everything at the audience for complete sensory overload with an overwhelming amount of flashy colours and large-scale sea monsters to make everyone’s jaw drop. Some found it terrifically cheesy and completely ridiculous, and others found that kicked major ass and provided some of the best escapism in any theatrical experience released in 2018 – especially if seen on IMAX 3D. In the final act of Malignant, Wan throws as much gore and gratuitous amounts of blood at the audience that two reactions will indeed be elicited. Some will find it unjustifiably violent and excessive, as a relatively quiet and composed supernatural thriller becomes a pure bloodbath, while others will think it is f**king fabulous.
Both are valid ways to assimilate the film’s ending, though the way Wan directs the bloodbath contains some of the more literate action sequences of any movie released this year. Think of it as a Michael Mann shootout that meets the extreme violence of a Takashi Miike blood-filled carnage. It is unlike anything that’s ever been made before and should be applauded by anyone who dares enter Malignant’s intricate plotting and balls-to-the-walls climax.
The most considerable flex for any blockbuster filmmaker is to make their next film one that completely defies their fan’s expectations and showcases their creative muscles. Malignant is nothing but a love letter to the genre James Wan grew up loving and made a name for himself when he directed Saw, Dead Silence, or Insidious and demonstrates, once again, how great of a genre filmmaker Wan is when he has complete creative control over the story. After pulling the audience into a compelling – and relatively quiet – first act, look at him go when he throws one of the biggest 180 twists of any picture released in this new decade while simultaneously giving Annabelle Wallis the very best acting role of her career. Wan’s film further solidifies that 2021 has been an incredible year for a full-on resurgence of genre cinema and shows that bright days are ahead for more creatively freeing and original entertainment – if the audience wants some, of course.