Malignant

Cronenberg giallo through Wan’s lens? A lot of bombast that mainstream viewers won’t care about. I enjoyed the visuals, Annabelle Wallis and courage but instead of being pleased by the point and the climax resulting from it, I found myself shaking my head. (10/10/2021)

A festival of bad decisions and red herrings, including some outright lies during the exposition. I am glad that James Wan is gradually trampling into the ground any expectations for the next variation on The Conjuring, but the direction he's taking is very wrong-headed for the given moment. The inferno of the last half hour does show how good of an action director he is, but I simply did not have the capacity to take anything happening on the screen seriously, even for a second. And yes, I understand that there are a lot of references and homages here, but when the source material you're referencing is a genre questionable at best, and you're replicating it in the majority of factors, I won't give you credit for imitation when the result is such a B-movie. (06/10/2021)

It seems Wan intended on making an insane horror movie about a mysterious killer. However, in doing so, he then got bogged down in all the carefully well-thumbed techniques and methods he learned from various ghost stories, and so he ended up with an overcomplicated, unintentionally ridiculous, and in every way an over-the-top piece of horseshit, in which a lot of things just do not make any sense at all because they have been thrown in simply for effect. Even so, the central idea (albeit patched together from all sorts of things that have come before), is quite interesting and thought-provoking. However, it should have been developed in a more restrained manner, with a smaller budget, and more concentrated approach. Why does this movie need those ambitious digitally enhanced CGI landscapes, megalomaniacal set design, and a running time of nearly two hours? It does not need all that really. All it would have taken was that instead of going off in an undisciplined way, doing whatever the hell he wanted. Also, if I see that every scene in his next movie is just an exaggerated onslaught of flickering lights, light-bulbs suddenly burning out, grainy images on phones, and radio static noise (because it is all supposed to be spooky bug-a-boo), I am going to be finished with him as a director for good. (15/09/2021)

Malignant has everyone parroting the idea that James Wan has created a neo-giallo film. But let's be clear: this movie has nothing to do with giallo, despite the claims of some that it echoes Argento, Bava, and other icons. No, just no! I was really looking forward to this film since I usually enjoy Wan's work, but this time he completely missed the mark. I was shocked at how sloppy it felt. Sure, the bird's-eye shot is cool, but I just can't get past the overly digital visuals. It would've been better if the ridiculousness wasn't taken so seriously! By the way, I was baffled by comments saying Joseph Bishara's score is reminiscent of Riz Ortolani. That’s a stretch. Seriously, listen to Ortolani's work before making such comparisons. Also, if you're going to talk about Wan paying homage to giallo, maybe watch some actual films by Argento, Bava, Fulci, or Martino first. Wan isn't paying tribute to anyone; he's just doing his own thing with bits and pieces from various trashy sources. This is purely a James Wan film, and nothing more. (15/09/2021)

Pure fun. The trailer touted a completely different film, but in the end James Wan actually made a Giallo purely for fun, but not the 70s Giallo, the serious kind that worked with pretty colours, a classic detective line and a masked killer in a black cloak, gloves and a knife; Malignant is closer to the later Giallo, which used to be spiced up with some completely insane fantasy element. It's hard to write about it without spoilers, but it would be a shame to reveal the film's plot twists. The script is fun because of the speed to which it builds up the plot, which is actually terribly silly and trashy. If it were another filmmaker, you might well wonder whether they are joking or being serious about this kind of film, but Malignant is clearly anchored somewhere in between. It has a lot of exaggerated details that seem downright comedic, which is obviously the intention, and it should be taken as some sort of playful joke with which the director had fun on the set, and which the viewer should also have fun with. That some of the details don’t make sense, it doesn’t matter. (10/09/2021)