Malignant

Argento. Hee hee hee. Cronenberg. Lol. A tribute to giallo. Ho ho ho. Dude, this is a total Vidocq in the sense of the work of a visual eccentric who is totally competent in the technical elements, but basically has no control over what's actually going on underneath the camera zooms, the staged action sequences, the simulated anamorphic lenses, and the CGI gothic madness. In the third act, it goes so far off the leash that it's resorts to pure camp. I didn't expect Wan could so comically screw this up. (09/12/2021)

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)

If the film, especially in the end, didn't crap on the rules of its world so much (the monster suddenly can't overpower a single bloke, but then it cuts a whole police station into shreds) and didn't offer a parody of Matrix-like action, I'd give it a happy 4*. The 80s concept of Basket Case driven by Wan's dark visuals and grindhouse violence is great, and even though we can see the twist coming, it's still fun to wait for it. An interesting genre flick, too bad Wan didn't stick more to the atmosphere and mystery of the first hour. 70 % (21/10/2021)

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)

A bland episode of Tales from the Crypt that only becomes entertaining during the overblown Troma-like finale. The problem is that before it tears off the chain, it's preceded by a full-length runtime of sheer boredom, zero tension building, unimaginative gore, slavish Giallo allusions, generic characters and non-existent atmosphere. There's a real risk that you won't even be awake for the finale. (07/05/2022)