Malignant

 1.5/4

Starring: Annabelle Wallis, Maddie Hasson, George Young, Michole Briana White

Rated R for Strong Horror Violence and Gruesome Images, and for Language

Over the pasts 20 years, James Wan has made a name for himself in the horror genre.  No one is as ubiquitous or successful.  "Saw," "Insidious," "The Conjuring" and its sequel.  The lure of money drew him to big franchises like "Furious 7" and "Aquaman," and he did well there too.  Wan's name is in the director's credit is gold.  So I settled back into my seat prepared for a good fright.  If not being scared out of my wits.  Halfway through, I began to wonder if this is the same James Wan who made those great movies instead of some shmuck with the same name.

Because this movie sucks.

Madison (Wallis) is going through a difficult time.  She's having a difficult pregnancy and her husband (Jake Abel) is a jerk who, despite giving up the booze, hasn't stopped throwing her around.  After he gives her a nasty bump on the head, the two of them are attacked in a brutal home invasion.  Her brutish husband dies, but so does her fetus.  Devastated, she tries to pick up the pieces of her life.  That's when things start to get stranger and more terrifying.  She's having visions of her attacker killing other people.  And these visions turn out to be real.  Now with the cops thinking she's making this up, or worse, she has to find a way to stop the killer.

When it comes to movies, consistency is everything.  A movie can do anything it wants as long as gives the audience a clear understanding of how everything works.  Movies like "The Matrix," "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and others get away with their elaborate fantasies because they explain how it works.  "Malignant" doesn't do this.  That expository dialogue that is so necessary comes far too late, and even then not everything makes sense.  Big reveals can be saved for the end, but there has to be consistency that the audience can see.  As a result, the audience can see the seams and inconsistencies, which makes it harder and harder to buy into the story.  I myself gave up halfway through.

With "Malignant," it isn't the central gimmick that is the problem.  Handled the right way, it could have been shocking (if more than a little derivative).  No, it's that Wan doesn't find a way to express it cinematically.  He muddies the waters too much, and it's hard to keep track of where the characters are, and how and why they are acting they way they do.  Such frustration leads to resentment rather than terror, and it feels exactly what it is: dumb and gimmicky.

Wan is not helped by his cast.  Annabelle Wallis is a star on the rise, but I have yet to see any real talent from her.  She's boring and uncharismatic, rarely distinguishing herself from the wallpaper.  True, the script does her no favors, forcing her to act like a blubbering idiot for 90% of the running time before a deus ex machine reversal.  Maddie Hasson is more convincing and energetic.  Had they switched roles, the film might have been on better footing.  George Young and Wanda Sykes-lookalike Michole Briana White are similarly flat, playing two of the most idiotic cops in movie history.  Even by slasher movie standards, these two are unbelievably stupid.  They still don't trust Madison even when they know the truth!

A good dose of terror can camouflage the idiocy needed for horror flicks to work.  How else to explain why Laurie Strode keeps throwing the knife away every time she nicks The Shape in "Halloween?"  Or that no one ever seems to hit the bad guy when he's down?  Horror movies rely on these cliches to inject suspense, but if the movie is working it doesn't matter.  The opposite is also true: bad horror movies exacerbate these oversights and turn it into an unintentional comedy.  Although I did like one one of the cops's lines during the bloody climax: "Send in the national guard!"