I really am not a night owl, during the week I'm in bed before 21:00 due to having to be up at 05:00 for my day job, and weekends I just seem to wake up around 06:00 however late I end up going bed. There are a bunch of horrors that I really want to see at the moment, I figured I would chose one of them to watch for a rare late night viewing, as there really is nothing better than watching a horror film late at night. I chose James Wan's (The Conjuring, Insidious, Saw) Malignant, as his films often have parts that feel creepy even in daylight. I had expected a supernatural horror, but this has more in common with a slasher, even more so with the Italian giallo genre.
Madison (Annabelle Wallis - Annabelle: Creation, The Mummy) is a woman in an abusive relationship. After hitting her head after her husband shoves her into a wall, she blacks out and while unconscious she has a nightmare that her husband is murdered by a strange looking figure dressed all in black. Awakening she is shocked to discover that her nightmare has come true, and her husband has indeed been murdered. After a few more nightmares in which she witnesses various people being butchered by the figure in black, she comes to realise that she somehow has a psychic link with a killer, and that she is able to sees it's wicked deeds. She eventually learns that the killer's name is Gabriel, and that in a bizarre twist it appears that this person may actually be her childhood imaginary friend taking on a physical form.
Malignant is a really cheesy movie, and I can't help but see this as a purposeful decision by Wan. The soundtrack has a real 'straight to video' B-movie sound to it, with constant over the top dramatic tunes running over the action. This cheesiness stretches out to the acting also, with a seemingly purposely dramatic feel to how the characters act. It even starts in an early 2000's indie horror type of way with an overlong and self indulgent intro credit sequence that seemed to drag on for far too long. The film often feels like it has an inflated feeling of self importance, with some extra cheesy scenes. One that springs to mind is a slow motion pan over a road full of cop cars and ambulances which was so pointless as well as dull.
One of my big issues with the film was that I guessed the twist within twenty minutes of the one hour fifty minute film starting (not perfectly, but I was about 95% correct). It is spelt out so clearly, with so many clues badly hidden in dialogue characters say. I'm not sure if the twist was meant to be that obvious, but it gave me the feeling of watching this for a second viewing on my first watch. There were scenes that played out and seemed so obvious. Who knows though, perhaps that twist isn't supposed to be hidden from the viewer, but it removed a lot of the mystery, and in turn removed my engagement. I will admit that Malignant handles the reveal of the twist well, including lots of in-film explanation. The killer looked decent enough, it seemed to have a face that consisted of a fleshy mass with one eye ball peeking out, and it had a great spider-like way of moving that included plenty of parkour using some bizarre backwards movements. I did think it was cool that for these scenes they used a real life contortionist rather than any type of CG. Talking of CG, the transitions where Madison is transported to the killer's location while dreaming seemed very artificial, more than a hint of computer effects to those sections. Unfortunately, and maybe unfairly, the look of the killer did really remind me of a monster from the comedy horror show Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, once that connection was made I found it even more difficult to take anything happening here seriously.
There was a much higher body count than it initially appeared there would be, the big set piece featuring mass murder in a small location. This was all neat, but it made for a film that wasn't at all scary, going down a more action based route that felt different to the often slow burn of some of Wan's other horror films.
Malignant has some definite supernatural elements to it (such as the killer having the ability to increase electricity currents), but the more physical nature of the antagonist meant it was much less scary than a straight supernatural horror. If I hadn't guessed the twist correctly so early on I might have been into this more, but instead it felt a bit of a drag getting to the eventual reveal of what I already believed things to be, leading to an underwhelming feel. That coupled with the cheesiness couldn't help but make me feel a bit let down, as I had the erroneous expectation of this being something that would chill me. Malignant is currently streaming on Netflix, though is due to leave the service towards the end of May.
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