Malignant (2021) - Review
There are few modern horror directors out there with a better reputation than James Wan at the moment. He gets criticized somewhat for his style of film that utilizes jump scares, has some campy or over-the-top moments, and often adds some action elements to the horror to make everything more exciting and dramatic. While he has produced more films than he’s directed, the movies and the horror franchises he started as a director include Saw, The Conjuring, and Insidious. All three of those franchises may have grown extremely long in the tooth, but the impact of those initial films in the horror genre is profound. So, when I heard that a new James Wan horror movie had just come out and was available for streaming, I was more than a little interested in watching it. As a result, I may have set my expectations a little too high.
Pros
Cool cinematic shots, including an interesting top-down perspective
Stylistically dramatic in a way that is typical of Wan’s films
Cons
Opening scenes do little to make audience care about the protagonists
Style and look of some scenes felt misleading; as though it were set in a different time period than what the filmmakers eventually felt like making the movie
Predictable plot with most of the writing on the wall immediately
Actual story twist is more nonsensical than anything else and doesn’t justify the entire story like it thinks it does
Some effects do not look good
Plot & Thoughts
After Madison Mitchell (Annabelle Wallis) is struck by her inebriated husband Derek (Jake Abel), Derek becomes the first of many people to meet their ends at the hand of a mysterious, murderous fiend. Worse for Madison is that she unconsciously bears witness to these murders in the form of horrific visions. A couple of police officers (George Young & Michole Briana White) investigate the murders and enlist the help of Madison in solving these crimes. Meanwhile, she consults her family in the hopes that they might be able to explain to her why she is experiencing these nightmares. The secrets they reveal over the course of the film, as you might expect, are surprising only to the characters.
In addition to the lack of surprising plot twists are the murders themselves. The horror in these visions is not just the murderous acts, however. They’re also horrific in their use of CGI effects. The walls and reform the room as the camera spins around her in dizzying intensity to emphasize how disoriented and terrified Madison is as she realizes that she’s in the dream, but a dream that is actually taking place. It’s as if Christopher Nolan had made Inception and decided to go with the effects from the Silent Hill film in 2004 and with technology that somehow manages to look worse.
If you haven’t caught on by now, I think Malignant is a bad movie. It is certainly one of James Wan’s biggest missteps as a director. There are the moments that stand out in a positive sense, like the shot of Madison running through multiple rooms and floors of a house from a constant top-down perspective. And even the cheesy bad acting of the actors in the opening scene prior to the credits made me hopeful that this would a fun, weird movie in the way that some of M. Night Shyamalan films have been, for better or worse. However, the acting is never bad enough to be entertaining, nor is the plot interesting enough to come across as new or intriguing.
More than anything else, I just felt confused and bored watching Malignant. The first scene with Madison had a style and look to it that made me question the decade it claimed to be in. With how Malignant started, I thought I was in for a Cabin in the Woods bait-n-switch, so I didn’t fully believe the “Present Day” tag at the bottom of the screen. Turns out I was supposed to believe the deliberate choices of the hair, clothing, and furniture style to actually be modern.
Once I finally accepted that my judgements were way off, it didn’t change the fact that the story was going in surprisingly dull directions without ever having convinced me that I should care about what happens to the people who are dying. At least with Saw, or The Conjuring, or Insidious, there was an active attempt to make me empathize with the characters. The only one with whom that’s the case here is Madison. Yet, she is mostly just a blank slate of a woman with no real discernable personality, so it’s all a wash.
TL;DR (Conclusion)
Every good director occasionally and inevitably falters, and James Wan is no different. Malignant is something of a boring and uninspired attempt at telling a story that is neither new or interesting. Aside from the occasional cool bit of cinematography or practical effects, there’s not much that this movie does here that you can’t get elsewhere. Multiple times as I was watching it, I had the very distinct feeling that I had seen this movie before, and not in a good way. I doubt Malignant will kick off another horror franchise like some of James Wan’s more notable films.
