Madison wants a baby more than anything, and for that, being pregnant, she is willing to endure the attacks of her abusive husband. One night, after another of his aggressive outbursts, a black malevolent entity sneaks into the couple’s house, killing her husband and attacking Madison. After losing her child, the woman returns home and tries to move on with her life, but soon she is haunted by creepy visions of murders that soon turn out to be real.
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“Malignant” is the new horror classic of the genre, James Wan. Beginning with his most famous work, “Saw,” Van began to drift away. First he made the mediocre “Dead Silence,” then the excellent “Death Sentence.” Both films, on the whole, audiences liked, but failed at the box office. And then, in 2010, luck again returned to its darling: “Astral” has snapped at the box office. From that moment on, Wan overnight became the major horror director of our time: after “Astral” he directed the sequel and produced the third and fourth part, started the “Spell” movie universe, which was the only one that managed not to perish and repeat the success of Marvel in another genre (we will omit the quality of some films, dry numbers). All in all, Wan may well have tired of the tumultuous production job, decided to get back in the director’s chair and shoot a new horror film. Did he succeed or not? Now I’ll answer this question in detail.
The plot of the film is simple. Madison lives under the same roof as a domestic tyrant. When she tries to leave, it’s too late: she gets pregnant. But tragedy strikes – an anonymous force cruelly kills her husband, and Madison herself only gets a thick slap from the scoundrel, but for her child, the incident becomes fatal – a miscarriage occurs. After these grim events, Madison begins to see murders committed by a supernatural entity, as if she were in the room next to him. But the scariest thing for her is that these murders are absolutely real, and to solve the scary mystery Madison will have to go into the past and remember what she was once running away from…
The plot is the weakest link in the film. No, it’s not written out of hand, but it’s the plot that’s the easiest to berate of the “Wicked” components. The plot is pretty boring and takes about half an hour to get into the action. Yes, in places the story presents spectacular and unexpected moments in the spirit of James Wan’s previous works, but, overall, I wouldn’t expect much from the plot, because the same unraveling of the killer’s identity, despite being spectacular (it was really frightening), is rather silly.
Annabelle Wallis, known to me from her role in “The Curse of Annabelle” produced by the same Wang, played very well. Where it is necessary to give off rage and madness, where it is necessary wildest despair. In addition, the girl is quite attractive in appearance, which for a horror movie is also not unimportant. Maddie Hasson does not stand out as a great actor, she is a standard supporting character, but her resemblance to the lovely Florence Pugh makes her a bit more interesting. Of the rest of the cast, the only one that stands out is George Young, who is here purely to distract the female half of the audience.
In terms of visuals, the movie is gorgeous. In fact, the whole picture is rather banal: a maniac in a black cloak, all-consuming darkness, destroying light bulbs and other clichés, but everything is made at the highest level. You can see that James Wan, after working on multimillion blockbusters, has learned to work very competently with light and other little things, which before in his horror films were at an average level. “Malignant” is definitely a new level for him in this respect. Separately, we want to mention the camerawork of Michael Burgess, who pleasantly surprised: before that he had only shot very mediocre spin-offs of “Spell” and, in fact, the third part of the main series of films (where, in fact, there were a couple of nice episodes of quality camerawork), but in “Evil” he surpassed himself. Camera rushes, unusual and interesting angles – words can’t convey, but it looks awesome. I also want to mention the soundtrack: very unusual and atmospheric. The thing is I feel like there are only three tracks in the whole movie, but they are used so competently that they don’t annoy you. And I especially appreciate the cover of the legendary “Where is my mind?” from the finale of “Fight Club”.
All in all, James Wan’s return to horror as a director is more than worthy. Personally, I was so pleased with his first “Astral” last time, but “Malignant” is probably even better: interesting and gorgeous visuals, atmospheric soundtrack, great acting and a couple of effective but silly episodes make you remember the film. And the police station massacre is one of the bloodiest and most violent not only in 2021, but in 2020. So, if you like quality horror movies, I highly recommend checking this film out.
Info Blu-ray
Video
Codec: HEVC / H.265 (58.3 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: HDR10
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Audio
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: Dolby Digital 5.1
French: Dolby Digital 5.1
German: Dolby Digital 5.1
German: Dolby Digital 2.0
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1
Spanish (Latino): Dolby Digital 5.1
Czech: Dolby Digital 5.1
Polish: Dolby Digital 5.1
Subtitles
English SDH, French, Spanish, German, Mandarin (Simplified), Mandarin (Traditional), Korean, Czech, Polish.
