Malignant (2021)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Much will be made of James Wan's "return to form" here, in his latest horror movie since forays into the DC and Fast & Furious franchises. And yet those discussions, I fear, may largely ignore his first feature films; his name has become synonymous with the big franchises that (along with Oren Peli's films) revamped the haunted house and possession subgenres over a decade ago. But Malignant, the most aggressively weird horror movie of the year, feels more like Wan doing his original work, finally with studio financial support and a big budget to burn. I make this connection right away, here, because it helped me appreciate the movie more; its flouting of genre and style was enough to initially put me off in the screening, and based on the conversation I overheard afterward, not many people were able or willing to dig deeper than a superficial bewilderment or dislike.

Okay, now we're entering spoiler territory. Yes, already. We'll try to avoid them, because a primary pleasure (or source of discontent, perhaps) of this film is its really wild plot twists, of which there are several, evenly spaced apart. But, then, this movie is so tightly wound I fear any discussion will lessen the impacts of its nasty shocks and creeping cruelties. So move forward with the knowledge that I'll not be discussing specifics of plot or character beyond the first few scenes, which is pretty much what we gleaned from the trailers.

Basically, the movie begins with Madison Lake (Annabelle Wallis from Annabelle, The Tudors, and Peaky Blinders) pregnant and living in Seattle. Feeling ill at work, she returns home and we learn from her discussion with her husband that they've been unable to have a child for some time. At one point, he maliciously asks her "How many times do I have to watch my children die inside you?" During their argument, he attacks her and hits her head against the wall before she retreats to the bathroom and locks herself in. After a disturbing dream in which a man enters the house and kills her husband, she wakes to find her husband murdered. The intruder then appears and attacks her. She awakens in the hospital, informed that her child did not survive. It's all a grimy, dark, and depressing start to what will be a disturbing story; it's about loss, to be sure, but also about what can take root when we succumb to our own pain. In that, this movie has a lot on its mind.

Since this inciting incident, Madison keeps seeing visions of people being murdered. Also, her head keeps bleeding where it was injured in her domestic scuffle. Now she's under investigation as a suspect. Once we learn the name of the killer stalking through her vivid, violent daydreams, "Gabriel," we learn that she has a disturbing connection to a Gabriel, namely her childhood imaginary friend. But the Gabriel we see is a gaunt male in a trench coat, a dark silhouette with long black hair obscuring his face, surely not the stuff of a kid's playtime. He's a seedy, urban Gothic serial killer with an unaccountable ability to swing around like a ninja. Why, we ask? Why not, Wan counters.

The connections begin to pile up, and before long -- because of the breakneck twists, there's hardly a dull moment -- the full reality of Madison's situation is made clear. Ish. Like I said, it's an aggressively weird reveal that is as much a game-changer as it is a flamboyant throwback to those awkward '80s horror-thrillers that skipped proper theaters and were dumped into VHS displays in local rental stores. Even the title font is in that vein, to say nothing of the lurid red and thickly evocative marketing materials (below). With its heavily synthesized music and emphasis on female suffering (or is it empowerment?), more than once I wondered if this film was meant to be an homage to giallo movies from Dario Argento or Mario Bava. While watching, often unsure whether to grimace or chuckle, I tried keeping track of all the clear homages to Cronenberg and his imitators but soon realized it was fruitless, if not impossible.

Wan is doing his own thing, as he always does. This feels as raw and inspired as Dead Silence and Death Sentence, movies so unapologetic in their brazen freakiness that they too polarized critics. While Malignant won't be remembered as a "great" horror film in the way Saw and Insidious are, and frankly I hope this one won't inspire a franchise, I do hope that it gains a cult following. Its plot holes and thin characters won't win new fans to Wan or the genre -- whatever the genre might be! -- but it's a fascinating view into an auteur whose instincts are still some of the most wickedly entertaining in the business.