MALIGNANT (2021)

Studio:      New Line Cinema
Director:    James Wan
Writer:      Akela Cooper, James Wan, Ingrid Bisu
Producer:  James Wan, Michael Clear
Stars:     Annabelle Wallis, Maddie Hasson, George Young, Jacqueline McKenzie, Michole Briana White, Jake Abel, Ingrid Bisu

Review Score:

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Summary:

Grisly murders force a haunted woman to face a shocking secret locked deep inside a forgotten childhood memory.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

1993 – Gabriel, a parasitic twin living on the back of eight-year-old patient Emily May, hijacks Emily’s body to go on a homicidal rampage throughout Simion Research Hospital. Using his psychic powers, Gabriel broadcasts threatening thoughts as a voice over the radio. Aided by Dr. John Gregory and Dr. Victor Fields, child reconstructive specialist Dr. Florence Weaver resolves to cut Gabriel off of Emily once and for all.

Present Day – Upset that she could be having a fourth miscarriage, Derek Mitchell angrily shoves his pregnant wife Madison into their bedroom wall. Madison, who doesn’t remember she used to be Emily May, violently hits her head, which unknowingly awakens Gabriel. Later that night, Gabriel murders Madison’s abusive husband. Gabriel uses his psychic link with Madison’s brain to give her visions that fool her into thinking they are separate people, even though Madison is actually imprisoned inside her own mind while Gabriel hijacks her body.

Seattle police detectives Kekoa Shaw and Regina Moss investigate Derek’s death. Madison’s sister Sydney Lake comforts Madison after learning she lost her unborn baby again.

Two weeks later, Madison continues feeling as though someone is stalking her home. To Sydney’s surprise, Madison reveals she was adopted, but doesn’t remember her life prior to joining Sydney’s parents. Sydney becomes emotionally hurt when Madison mentions she has been desperate to have a child because she longs for a biological family bond.

Gabriel captures his and Madison’s birth mother, Serena May, in the Seattle underground. Gabriel secretly imprisons Serena in Madison’s attic where he also sets up a workshop.

While Gabriel takes over her body again, Madison has a vision that she is still at home. Madison’s surroundings warp so it suddenly seems as though she transported inside Dr. Weaver’s home. Madison sees Gabriel bludgeon the doctor to death with a medical trophy he keeps and later fashions into a small spear. Madison’s scream returns her to reality.

Shaw and Moss investigate Dr. Weaver’s murder. The detectives learn Weaver was a child reconstructive specialist while collecting items from her office, including a photo of Emily May as a young girl, for further analysis.

Madison tells Sydney about her vision. Madison adds that the man she saw kill Dr. Weaver was the same man who killed Derek.

Gabriel kills Dr. Fields next. At the same time, Madison experiences another reality morph that shows her Gabriel violently stabbing Fields to death with Weaver’s trophy.

Sydney takes Madison to the police station so she can tell Shaw and Moss about her unusual visions. Although they disbelieve her seemingly crazy claims, the detectives go to the location Madison describes from her vision and they find the butchered body of Dr. Fields.

Using their psychic bond, Gabriel communicates with Madison over her phone. Gabriel calls Madison “Emily.” Madison begins remembering Gabriel as an imaginary entity from childhood that her foster parents claimed wasn’t real.

Madison and Sydney visit their mother Jeanne to find out more about Gabriel. Jeanne shows the sisters disturbing home movies of Madison talking to an unseen entity as a child.

An aged rendering of the photo found in Dr. Weaver’s office reveals to Shaw that Madison was Weaver’s patient Emily May. Through videos recovered from one of Weaver’s flash drives, Shaw also learns about the three doctors that treated Emily, who suffered from visions and dark thoughts she attributed to the devil. As the last surviving doctor from Emily’s case, Shaw realizes Dr. Gregory is in immediate danger.

Madison experiences another reality warp that shows her Gabriel killing Dr. Gregory. Shaw arrives at Gregory’s apartment to find the doctor already butchered in his bathtub. Shaw ends up injured as he chases Gabriel down a fire escape and into the Seattle underground, but Gabriel ultimately scurries away.

Shaw and Moss meet with Madison and Sydney in Madison’s home. Shaw reveals that Madison is really Emily May and the three dead doctors were involved in her case study.

Hypnotherapist Beverly Woods has Madison undergo a regression that unlocks additional memories. Madison remembers Gabriel using his reality-altering visions to try tricking Madison into murdering Sydney when she was in her mother’s womb. Madison realizes Gabriel didn’t want her to have a sister because then she wouldn’t need him anymore. Once Sydney was born, Gabriel became a repressed memory lost deep in the back of Madison’s head until Derek’s abuse woke him up. Moss refuses to believe the killer could be Madison’s imaginary friend from childhood.

Madison’s birth mother Serena breaks free from her restraints in the attic. While trying to escape, Serena crashes through several floors and falls in front of the shocked sisters and detectives. With Serena unconscious, she goes to the hospital as an unidentified Jane Doe. After the detectives find Gabriel’s coat and murder weapon in the attic workshop, they arrest Madison for the killings.

Madison grows increasingly agitated during her interrogation at the police station. All of the light bulbs suddenly break in the room. Gabriel issues several threats by psychically broadcasting his voice through Shaw’s phone. The detectives remain uncertain about what to believe.

Sydney goes to the abandoned Simion Research Facility to look into Madison’s adoption. Sydney brings a video back to Jeanne that shows Dr. Weaver interviewing Serena May, whom Jeanne was told died during childbirth but was actually raped at 15 and led to believe her child was evil. Additional footage reveals Gabriel was a parasitic twin psychically bonded to Emily, who was at the facility to have Gabriel removed like a tumor due to his evil influence. Dr. Fields theorized that because they shared the same brain, Gabriel could trick Madison into thinking she was living an ordinary life when she was actually imprisoned inside her mind while he used her body. Dr. Weaver surgically removed all that they could of Gabriel, and suppressed the remainder inside Emily/Madison’s skull to avoid brain damage.

Other female inmates beat up Madison in the police station’s holding cell. Having suffered another head trauma, Madison painfully pulls open the back of her skull to reveal Gabriel’s face. Gabriel takes over Madison’s contorted body and viciously slaughters the other prisoners before escaping into the station.

Sydney calls Shaw with a frantic explanation of how Gabriel can puppeteer Madison’s body. Meanwhile, Gabriel retrieves his belongings from the evidence room and continues killing police officers. Moss and Shaw attempt to fight Gabriel, but they become badly injured and Gabriel escapes.

Having identified Jane Doe as Gabriel and Madison’s birth mother, Shaw rushes to the hospital to protect Serena while Moss stays behind to recover from her wounds. Gabriel goes on another killing spree in the hospital while making his way to his mother’s room. Gabriel pins Sydney to a wall with an overturned hospital bed when she tries to protect Serena.

Serena comes out of her coma. Serena seemingly reaches Gabriel on an emotional level when she apologizes for treating him like a monster, but Shaw interrupts. Gabriel’s rampage continues. Sydney begs Madison to fight against Gabriel’s control, and gives her sister renewed rage by pointing out that Gabriel grew stronger by killing her unborn children to feed on the fetuses.

Gabriel seemingly shoots Sydney in the head and suffocates Serena. However, their deaths turn out to be illusions as Madison actually reversed Gabriel’s psychic ability to give him false visions of reality. Madison asserts dominance over Gabriel as she locks him back up in her brain. Madison returns to normal and she reunites with her sister. A light bulb buzzes in the foreground, indicating Gabriel still has some power.

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Review:

What’s left to say about James Wan that hasn’t been said already? Wan hasn’t even hit the halfway point in his career and he already has a filmography that easily earns him enshrinement in the Horror Hall of Fame. Unless you’re a contrarian edgelord eager to die on a “he’s a jump scare hack, his trope-filled movies aren’t scary, blah blah blah” hill, every fright film fan who follows the genre’s evolution recognizes James Wan as a modern master of the macabre.

Hollywood hasn’t changed him either. Even after playing in the big blockbuster sandboxes of the DCU and “Fast and the Furious” franchises, “Malignant” marks Wan’s return to his roots of smaller-scale spookshows made on his own terms. As he himself put it, “I wanted to go back and make a movie for the fans, the hardcore horror fans that have supported me. I don’t know when I’ll ever get the chance to do something as crazy and outrageous as this again.” Here’s a director whose continued success can get him a meeting at any studio in the world. Yet he happily chooses to wave away triple-A projects to instead indulge in a wild horror hodge-podge that’s an homage to every kooky cult classic, old school oddity, and bizarre B-movie that glowed like the “Raiders of the Lost Ark” idol to monster kids who grew up on video store weirdness.

Truly, James Wan is the only person who could pull off a production this daringly daffy. A genuine magician when it comes to crafting cinematic scares, Wan mixes his slick sense of explosive style with throwback thrills that evoke the ‘80s and ‘90s nuttiness of things like “Basket Case” and “Re-Animator.” “Malignant” is what a gritty direct-to-video horror film looks like when it’s made by passionate professionals on a multimillion-dollar budget, and I mean that as a high compliment.

It’s not a coincidence that one of the imaginary agencies in the movie goes by the name “Guiding Light.” With story beats involving amnesia, comas, secret adoptions, and family members believed to be dead who actually aren’t, screenwriter Akella Cooper writes “Malignant” like a goofily grisly soap opera. Wan then tunes the cast to play everything semi-seriously, resulting in an intentionally off-the-wall aesthetic that makes every sinister shock, vicious kill, and creative curveball seem somehow more insane.

Even when its tongue licks the inside of its cheek, “Malignant” isn’t a comedy, although it is supposed to be funny. Comic relief quips from a Wanda Sykes-esque detective and an all-women holding cell populated by Mad Magazine caricatures are deliberate reminders that Wan means for “Malignant” to be as fun as it is fearsome.

Of course, anytime tone rides a risky rail like this one, the end result divides viewers who synch with the frequency from those who don’t. It’s insulting to tell someone with a different opinion that they just didn’t “get” a movie, but I have to say, people who pan “Malignant” for being campy, cheesy, and completely implausible appear to be misinterpreting the signals. “Malignant” isn’t trying to play a joke on anyone. Provided they pick up on the plentiful references Wan makes to other movies, the audience is in on this joke, which is part of how “Malignant” ends up being so dementedly entertaining. Once you realize what Wan is up to, you can leave yourself in his capable hands and simply enjoy saying “What the f*ck?” about as often as the characters onscreen do.

“Bonkers” has been used countless times by countless critics to describe “Malignant.” That sentiment has been beaten to death, but that doesn’t make it any less accurate. Some will still hate on “Malignant” for the offense of being a mainstream movie that has the horror community buzzing, and they have to dump on anything deemed too popular to be worth liking. That, or they just want to argue about what actually constitutes a “giallo.” (For the record, “giallo” has been misused so often that it now basically just means “Italian horror film.”) The irony is, if “Malignant” came from the video store era it emulates, complete with charmingly rough practical effects and awkward acting instead of having a spit-shine polish, those same haters would hail it as a midnight movie masterpiece.

We don’t get fearlessly go-for-broke fright flicks like “Malignant” often. We’ve got to celebrate the rare ones that do come along. “Malignant” is definitely worth the party. Bring your booze, treats, and sense of humor, and let loose for a gruesomely good time.

Review Score: 80

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