Malignant (2021)
I’ll admit, I have no experience with the giallo genre. I know that, aesthetically, giallo movies revel in crimson and psychological mystery, and that they would go on to inspire the slasher genre here in America. However, that’s where my knowledge ends. That means that, in fairness, there’s an entire aspect of Malignant that, from what I understand, falls on deaf ears with me. Director and co-writer James Wan, who I absolutely adore, made Malignant as something of a love letter to the films that inspired him, from giallo to the pulp mysteries of a bygone era.
With that being said, it should be even more significant when I say that I absolutely ADORED Malignant.
Penned by Wan and his equally-talented wife Ingrid Bisu, Malignant follows a woman named Maddie as she seemingly develops a psychic connection with a murderer, witnessing their crimes as they occur. While she tries to figure out why this could be happening to her, the killer begins to infiltrate her mind and dig up her past. Meanwhile, detectives Kekoa Shaw and Regina Moss follow the very same killer’s trail, but Moss begins to suspect that Maddie herself might be the killer instead.
This is another one, folks, where I have to warn you of incoming spoilers. Sadly, the greater mystery in play during Malignant is the biggest draw of the movie, and also its greatest strength. To sing this movie’s praises, I’ll also have to give away its secrets.
See, what really earns Malignant such high praise from me is it unfaltering commitment to the bit. It is, without a doubt, melodramatic and cheesy. It revels in the most ridiculous of revelations, it sees characters deliver absolutely bonkers lines and plot points with absolute seriousness, and it features a villain who is so cartoonish and improbable that you can’t even begin to connect with them until the very, very end.
This is all wonderful, in case I’m not making that clear; I love this kind of movie. A movie that exists to be entertainment, that rests its entire premise on being fun deserves recognition, something that I believe is in short supply nowadays. This very website exists because movies have become far too serious of a medium. I love a good Oscar-bait film, I really do, but I also love sitting down, accepting an extremely wacky premise as reality, and enjoying myself, too.
Not every movie has to be The Revenant or The Godfather. There’s room for Transformers and The Expendables.
Anyway, the killer of Malignant, Gabriel, is cool in all of the most outlandish ways. He’s fast, strong, and agile, flipping around and defying all logic as he takes on entire squads of police with an ease that oozes classic cool. Draped in a black trench coat and gloves, Gabriel is such a classic silhouette of a killer that it’s almost a parody of itself. This, combined with his ethos, makes him one of the more memorable killers of the modern horror era.
Gabriel feels slighted, you see. He’s been shoved away for too long, and now that he’s back, he’s going to make it everyone’s problem. That includes his poor, beleaguered sister, Maddie. While she is only just beginning to remember him, he remembers everything about her, and he’s been here since the beginning. He knows her every move, and happily shows her what he’s doing to his victims, people she doesn’t even realize that she knows. He’s been scorned, and he won’t stop until everyone who did so meets a bloody end, just as he did.
Oh, and he’s also attached to the back of Maddie’s head? I guess that’s important, too.
Gabriel is, in fact, a parasitic twin, a brother that Maddie absorbed in the womb and who is none too happy about this arrangement. They share a brain, but he essentially is inverted, his face placed on the back of her head. Doctors, back when Maddie and Gabriel were young, decided that, while they would like to help them both, Gabriel’s aggressive and seemingly-supernatural gifts are harming Maddie to the point of concern, and they’re going to have to excise him like a tumor.
Because they share a brain, however, they can’t fully remove him, so instead, they basically cut off everything they can, and shove the remaining brain connections into Maddie’s skull. While this mostly works, despite some hiccups when she’s younger, Gabriel awakens when Maddie’s abusive husband hits her head against a wall, waking Gabriel up and start the bloodshed. He’s the first victim, thankfully.
Do you see what I mean about how absolutely out there this is? Gabriel is puppeteering Maddie’s body, in reverse, with superhuman strength and agility, to exact revenge on a team of doctors. How is that not like, the most awesome premise you’ve ever heard of?!
James Wan’s directing oozes a certain style, one that I’ve adored since Saw, and that style bleeds from every moment of this movie. The murder weapon is a sharped trophy with wings, Gabriel’s trench coat look is almost certainly a decision borne of aesthetic principle, and every camera movement and angle is evocative. This even includes the scenes where Maddie’s reality melts away, as Gabriel stops fooling her. Whenever he goes off to murder someone, he essentially overrides Maddie’s senses, making her believe she’s going about her day normally. When he’s done with this charade, the rooms melt away in an unbelievable visual effect that honestly deserves some awards.
All of this culminates in Gabriel eventually going on a rampage, one that has to be seen. It’s all so cartoonish that I couldn’t help but just grin my way through it. Malignant isn’t trying to be a serious, introspective movie about “the ties that bind” or something like that. It’s not a heady look at family, even with such elements present. It’s not a terrifying horror movie either, though it will psychologically harangue you for much of its runtime.
What Malignant IS doing is being a fun movie. It’s a joy to watch, even as things begin to unravel and Gabriel stops being a mysterious, trench-coated figure and instead becomes an absolute freight train of violence. It’s scarlet-splattered, golden-bladed, backwards-running fun, and I couldn’t praise it more for it.
