Malignant (2021) is a horror trashterpiece

I love OTT. Sounds like fun. No HBO Max where I live sadly and avoiding cinemas due to being immunocompromised. Will check it out someday though. 

I saw this movie in theaters, then immediately went home and watched it on HBO Max. I'm a huge horror fan, both in the geek sense and aficionado sense. I love the "high brow" or as they call them "elevated" horror movies of today, i.e. The Babadook, The Witch, Hereditary, Green Room, Suspiria '18 etc. but nothing gets me more excited than when an honest to goodness pure entertainment, non cynical horror movie comes out and delivers. I always leave the theater on such a high, these are movies like Saw, Drag Me To Hell, Piranha 3D, The Cabin In The Woods, Insidious, The Conjuring, The Guest, Halloween '18 etc. These don't come around that often when I'm just in glee the entire runtime because I know I'm watching a film where nobody making it felt cynical of what they were doing. None of these filmmakers did interviews trying to distance themselves from their genre, saying crap like "it's not really a horror movie (even though there's tons of blood and demons), yada yada yada". James Wan makes horror movies unapologetically, and he approaches them from the perspective that they're righteous. I mean, he created Jigsaw, the slasher who they spend 9 movies explaining why he's a Saint, and The Conjuring, simple demonic possession movies that are told as reverent biopics of two known con-artists, it's no shock he delivered the most sentimental of the Fast & Furious series, and was the director that turned the dismal DCEU from dark brooding stories of reluctant antiheroes into fun heroes journeys with AquaMan (I think find way more cynicism in Wonder Woman than most people).

Basically what he's done with Malignant is he's made a classic Giallo movie (sans misogyny) and combined it with elements of post-2000 Quentin Tarantino, and 1990's-2000's Dark Castle Films production remakes, I mean the cold opening of this movie and the overall haunted maze aesthetic of the movie seems clipped directly from House on Haunted Hill '99 or House of Wax '05. Now, of course, a movie with such influences is going to have camp, all of Kill Bill is camp, and Giallo has a long history of camp (prime-ish Argento made a movie that climaxes with a chimpanzee saving the day), I believe this gives Wan license to go as big with this movie as he desired, and he does. I won't spoil the movie, but I will credit Wan for how he handles his twist. Most movies that hinge on a big twist often leave audiences mind blown for 20 seconds then you can't wait for the end credits to roll so you can dwell upon how cool the twist was. I can't even remember what happens after the reveals in such movies as Sixth Sense, The Others, Orphan etc. Wan remedies this by going even more extreme with his post-reveal climax. He goes straight into a House of Blue Leaves level action set piece. He goes so ham you almost forget how excited you were during the reveal.

This was a movie custom made for my tastes, and it'll be one I return to every Halloween from here on out. It's a shame the box office will probably rule out the possibility of sequels, but hopefully through HBO Max and Blu-ray it garners the same type of honorary mainstay status as the sequelless Trick R Treat and eventually Gabriel becomes as omnipresent on the shelves of Spirit Halloween as Sam has become. I give the movie a very solid A and in my opinion solidifies James Wan as the king of horror for this era.

Wow. I'll take a look.

For the most part I was like "WTF is this nonsense?" and THEN they got to the twist reveal and I was "Ooooookay, maybe I can see what they're trying to do here."

I'll probably check this out at some point. Looks interesting.

Damn  bro. Where ya from? Do yourself a favor and give it a watch here:zz genvideos.io/watch_Malignant_2021.html#video=ZcUFVZ6JkKrN6NeluTSqVw9GAfM0kHTSX4cKSw

5/10

The first two thirds are a decent enough, seemingly supernatural, horror mystery. That last third if fucking bonkers. Can't remember the last time a horror film ended with me grinning from ear-to-ear. The moment is a brilliant surprise.

I watched the Mark Kermode review on TV and he seemed to be laughing through most of the review - a spot on reaction. Not because the film is funny haha or funny bad, but because you can't quite believe someone made this film.