A cool thing about MALIGNANT is that the trailers made it look like the new movie from James Wan, the director of INSIDIOUS and THE CONJURING, when it’s actually the new movie from James Wan, the director of INSIDIOUS, THE CONJURING and AQUAMAN. After you direct Dolph Lundgren on a seahorse you’re not content to just do a fuckin demon possession or haunted house for your next horror movie. You gotta go further.
I feel a little out of step for not loving all of Wan’s movies. In my CONJURING 2 review I wrote, “Like all of Wan’s ghost movies, I started out thinking ‘This is one of the most effective ghost movies I’ve seen!’ and ended thinking ‘I guess I just don’t really like ghost movies that much.’” They’re extremely well directed and I have a bunch of nice things to say about them, but I guess that genre just doesn’t do it for me. (And I’m still uncomfortable that the great CONJURING protagonists are based on real life charlatans who never face accountability for their lifetime of exploitation.)
So I’ve always been in the weird position of being more into Modern Master of Horror James Wan’s occasional non-horror movies. FURIOUS SEVEN, of course, and I love AQUAMAN, and it was DEATH SENTENCE that really turned me into a fan. I still think that’s a brilliant and under-recognized version of the “vigilante revenge is not as great as it sounds” story, with some really original and well-executed action sequences, and Kevin Bacon giving a full-hearted dramatic performance unhindered by the pulpiness around him.
In Wan’s first film since AQUAMAN (2018) and first horror film since THE CONJURING 2 (2016) he combines those well-honed horror chops with what he learned from making a movie with an octopus in warpaint playing FURY ROAD drums, and I’m so happy to finally be fully on board a James Wan horror joint. MALIGNANT is a keeper.
It begins with a frenzied prologue: mayhem in a spooky hospital, something to do with someone named Gabriel who’s “getting stronger” and “becoming more malicious,” keeps trying to escape, and can control machines and broadcast his thoughts over the intercom. Thoughts like “I WILL KILL YOU ALL.” So they decide “It’s time we cut out the cancer!”
The dialogue and performances in this scene are so campy I thought to myself, “Why can they never do a horror-movie-within-a-horror-movie opening fake out that doesn’t telegraph that it’s a horror-movie-within-a-horror-movie opening fake out?” And then the credits started and realized no, that’s just the actual movie! That might sound like a pretty harsh insult, but I mean it as a compliment. You don’t expect a big slick studio horror movie to be this tonally unhinged.
Still, it pretends to be pretty normal for a while. We meet Madison (Annabelle Wallis, X-MEN FIRST CLASS, THE MUMMY [the good one {sorry <not sorry>}], KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD, BOSS LEVEL, looking like an Angelina Jolie stunt double), a very pregnant Seattle woman who comes home from her late shift early because of stomach pain, which does not go over well with her shitty husband Derek (Jake Abel, THE LOVELY BONES), because he wants to watch MMA in the bedroom. Trigger warning: This fucker hits her. Schadenfreude warning: While she takes a nap this fucker’s body will be bent and twisted into impossible configurations.
So we got a mystery on our hands. Someone is killing people, many of them connected to that hospital from the prologue. Could be this “Gabriel,” who could be a ghost, a dark half, a split personality, we don’t really know. But Madison keeps having visions where her surroundings peel away and she finds herself at the scenes of these murders. The killer is a slim, long-haired person in a fancy goth coat, with bizarre movements and a talent for slashing with a dagger he forges from a trophy stolen from one of the victims. Sometimes he talks over radios or phones in a creepy voice and sometimes he has a weird monster face.
Most of what I’ve described so far isn’t too far from a mainstream type of horror, and it’s really in the last act, when all is revealed about what the fuck is going on, that it explodes into glorious lunacy. But even in this semi-normal stretch there are bits of oddballness, like the jokes about various women being nervous around dreamy Detective Kekoa Shaw (George Young, A BREAD FACTORY: PARTS 1 & 2) or Madison’s actress sister Sydney (Maddie Hasson, GOD BLESS AMERICA) refusing to believe that the police don’t work with psychics because she once played one on a cop show. A great example of the heightened world this takes place in is when Madison has one of her visions and tells the police it happened “across the street from the Silvercup Apartments in north Beacon Hill.”
Maybe it makes no sense for her to be familiar with a random apartment building by name, and maybe it makes no sense the reason she knows the name is that it is written in giant light-up letters on the roof. But especially it makes no sense that those letters saying SILVERCUP are clearly a reference to Silvercup Studios in New York, a former bakery turned film and TV production studio that I know about because it’s the roof where McLeod fights the Kurgan at the end of HIGHLANDER.
I guess there are a few parallels – the killer’s weapon is like a sword, Highlanders absorb electricity, one other thing that’s a vague spoiler – but it still seems kind of random. SILVERCUP was even MALIGNANT’s working title, and I don’t get that. But thank you to Al Tran, who pointed me to Wan’s Facebook page, where HIGHLANDER director Russell Mulcahy brought it up himself and Wan called it a tribute to his fellow Aussie director. So that much is confirmed.
Let me describe another little thing that’s maybe less weird but also shows the kind of movie we’re dealing with. As they begin to uncover Madison’s mysterious past, Sydney traces her history to the hospital where the prologue took place. It is, of course, a towering monstrosity perched on a rocky ledge over the ocean, like a haunted house. And it’s closed, but left intact, so that she can break in and dig through files in cobwebbed basement archive. But what I want to call your attention to is that when she arrives, she drives around the building and parks her car a few feet from the edge of the cliff. There’s no guard rail there or anything, and there’s no reason that needs to be the place to park, but she just does it, and doesn’t seem to notice. I love it.
It has come to my attention that there has been some discussion about how much or how little this is like/inspired by giallo films. It’s not one of those retro pastiches, so honestly I didn’t even think about that while watching it, but in retrospect, yeah, of course it is. Unseen killer, fetishistic black leather gloves, fanciful bladed weapon. And there are Argento/Italian touches like the bold blue and red lighting (I suppose Wan has done that before) and a score by Joseph Bishara that’s more rockin than is currently en vogue. The centerpiece of that is a Safari Riot and Grayson Sanders version of “Where Is My Mind” – it plays like part of the score so I kept thinking, “Doesn’t the score sound like that Pixies song?”
But you’re right, giallo doesn’t normally include supernatural/sci-fi stuff, we know that, let’s move on.
I should address that this movie takes place in Seattle, though it’s not filmed here. There are a few second unit shots to place the cars in actual Seattle and stuff, and of course the requisite drone shot of the Space Needle, but I don’t think the actors are ever seen here. I’m glad it was at least filmed in L.A. – Vancouver has gotten enough work pretending to be us.
I got some chuckles from it because most of the locations make no attempt to resemble Seattle at all, and then it will cut to that second unit footage. They did bother to get a real neighborhood name in there (Beacon Hill) and they do have a good reason to set it here: so that they could have a scary scene in what I have always known as “Underground Seattle,” but apparently the official name is “Seattle Underground.” After the Great Seattle Fire of 1889 it was decided to regrade the streets higher, so businesses were built with bottom floors at the old street level and the alleys between them were eventually covered over with the new streets. At first they kept the subterranean alleys accessible, but it was condemned before the 1909 World’s Fair and abandoned to become opium dens, speakeasies and gambling halls (that must’ve been a hell of a hangout!). Now it’s a tourist attraction, and in the movie one of the guides (Jean Louisa Kelly, AMERICAN SHAOLIN) is abducted by Gabriel while working there. (This is not the first time something like this has happened in these tunnels, as you can see in the documentary below.)
I assume they’re on a set (seems like they’d go deeper into the tunnels if they were really filming there) but it does look pretty accurate to how I remember it when I went on the tour as a kid.
By the way, the tour guide makes some dumb joke about Nirvana and Pearl Jam, which makes sense for tourists, but just so you know, we only listen to Sir Mix-a-Lot and Antifa marching bands here. That was one major oversight, the soundtrack should’ve been all Sir Mix-a-Lot. THE PAPER TIGERS was made by Seattle people, that’s why it opens with a Kid Sensation song.
Another thing people who don’t live in Seattle might not know is that our holding cells are full of women dressed as archetypes from ‘70s and ‘80s movie. So when detectives Shaw and Moss (Michole Briana White, LILA & EVE) finally decide Madison has too many connections to these murders she gets locked up with and bullied by a bunch of tough gals including a woman (Shaunte Lynette Johnson maybe?) with an afro and polyester bellbottom jumpsuit that Foxy Brown could’ve worn and Zoe Bell with a mullet and jean jacket, credited as “Scorpion.” In this movie they’re here to welcome the shift from pretty good kinda odd horror to straight up classic, as the other characters finally piece together what the fuck is going on here and the movie unloads a fantasia of Shit I Did Not Expect To See. Please, I beg you to watch it without spoiling it for yourself, but from here on out it’s time to talk SPOILERS with the people who have seen it.
I love the BASKET CASEness of young Gabriel, monster head and little squiggly arms growing out of the back of his sister. Up to this point I figured we were dealing with some sort of vengeful goth tumor living under Pioneer Square. But no, of course I didn’t guess that they’d just stuffed him back into poor Madison and the killer is him peeking out of the crack in her skull, controlling her body running around backwards. And if I had guessed that of course I would never have dreamed we’d get to see that character – portrayed by talented contortionists and stunt people moving backwards, or with backwards clothes and a mask on the back of their head like that guy in GYMKATA – in a long and thrillingly choreographed action scene spinning, flipping and slicing through everybody at the police station. (I do remember when Gabriel did this, though. It was all over the local news at the time.)
I can’t think of another time I saw a horror movie and it unexpectedly had legit action scenes in it. Quite a bonus. The stunt coordinator is Glenn Foster (Robert Downey Jr.’s long time stunt double) and fight coordinator/assistant stunt coordinator is Loyd Bateman (Gary Daniels’ double in HUNT TO KILL). I expected it was gonna be guys Wan worked with on AQUAMAN, because it reminds me of those fights Nicole Kidman’s character had, meticulously planned and practiced to achieve a quick succession of very heightened, impossible, sometimes FX-assisted moves in continuous shots. (I’m also reminded of Wan-pal Leigh Whannell’s UPGRADE.)
When I reviewed THE CONJURING I debated whether it counted as a “spookablast,” a term Sam Raimi used to describe DRAG ME TO HELL that was briefly adopted by many critics. I determined that no, it was too grounded to be enough of a blast, despite the spookiness. I am happy to report however that MALIGNANT is definitely a spookablast.
I have one minor complaint. There’s plenty of goofy lines and stuff that some people probly say is “bad” but to me is an important part of the whole vibe of the movie. But I do wish we knew something more about Madison’s life before this than trying to have a baby despite an abusive husband. Like, can she at least have a hobby? At the beginning she has come home early from work, but I don’t believe the job is specified or mentioned again. I appreciate that it’s a movie that doesn’t waste a bunch of time fucking around, but I think there was room in there to give her a little more character. Just saying Jessica Chastain’s character in MAMA was a bass player went a long way (though that one fell into the cliche of showing motherhood as the most important thing any woman could do, even if she says otherwise, which this thankfully does not).
The screenplay is by Akela Cooper, who has mostly written for TV shows (Grimm, The 100, Luke Cage) but also did HELL FEST. I enjoyed that one, but this is a step up. Story credit goes to Wan, Cooper and Ingrid Bisu (Wan’s wife, who is also an actress in BLOODRAYNE, TONI ERDMANN and THE NUN – in this she plays the nerdy CST Winnie). MIMIC 3: SENTINEL director J.T. Petty reportedly worked on it at some point too, but he’s not credited.
I did go see MALIGNANT in a theater, which I loved, but I can’t say it was a communal experience because there was only one other person in there, and if he was laughing like I was I didn’t hear him. It seems this can’t possibly make back the $40 million they spent on it, because they released it during a pandemic while you could also watch it for free on Home Box Office Maximum. That’s a shame if it prevents us from getting a sequel where Gabriel the Backwards-Walking Tumor Highlander is a known quantity from frame 1. I’d love if it paid off the tour guide’s line about “rumors of passages stretching for miles.”
(Or a MALIGNANT ORIGINS: SCORPION prequel)
Still, there ended up being something special about it coming out this way, because so many more people watched it right away and were able to be excited about it at the same time. People who probly wouldn’t have given it a chance or would’ve waited for video saw it while it was fresh. I’ve also heard of many people seeing it in the theater and then rewatching it at home (which I will probly do myself).
And it just makes me so proud as a Seattleite that our pantheon of local heroes can include Jimi, Bruce, Kurt, Sue Bird & Megan Rapino, and now Parasitic Gabriel. Maybe relatives will start calling to make sure we didn’t get slashed by a backwards person instead of to see if we’re safe from anarchist riots.
September 15th, 2021 at 1:01 pm
Oh wow I just wrote a comment about this on Shang chi hoping you would review it too. And the research here confirms that I was wrong. I really thought Brad Allen had some form of contribution to this before he died I’m not sure what deja vu or glitch made me think that was fact but either way the choreographed scenes in this movie made me love it. I kept thinking the same thing you were in that it had to be a fake movie within a movie in the beginning, only to realize it was the fake movie the whole time. Like one of those grindhouse trailers but in it’s full form. It’s hard for me to even hate this movie because I love what James Wan was going for. In that, he made a so bad it’s good movie but done so well that it can’t be all bad because it was done on purpose. All the music cues, the shots of the house being reused, the cops being almost useless in every situation following the murder, the sister going to a scary mental closed down mental institution by herself and then cutting it to her making it back home safe, and the Falls!! Oh man the falls in this we’re just too funny. It’s just so over the top in it’s overt the topness that is almost genius. Like a parody movie you’d want to make with your friends only in James wan’s style. I don’t even know where this falls but I’m just going to have it as his attempt at making a comedy. Also, I don’t know why but the jail scene kinda reminded me of the nic cage scene from ghost rider but a bloodier female version.