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)

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)

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)

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)