We went to see Malignant yesterday, since it seems likely that this will be the last week it's in theater. (Alex and I were the only two in the theater for the mid-afternoon showing.)

I stayed away from any in-depth reviews of it, but was told that it was really original and creative and had a great twist. I watch and enjoy a lot of horror, so I had high-ish hopes that I would at least like it fairly well.

I... did not like it.

I'm not doing a real review*, more just a list of my thoughts on it, but I'll cut it before any big spoilers. (And I WILL spoil the big twist, so don't click if you want to see it and be surprised!) If you want to avoid even minor spoilers, skip the whole thing.

*This proved to be a lie; I apparently had lots to say, and it's very close to an actual review, except it's a lot more rambly and disjointed. Dammit. Maybe I'll fix it up and dust off the horror review blog, but no promises.

Okay, the parts I did enjoy:

- the room-melty effects (which are on display in the trailer) are real cool. Similar-ish to the Silent Hill movie's transition from foggy world to otherworld, though less stylized, but still visually neat.

- there are also some good practical effects with the "creature". Also good physical body-motion by the actress portraying the monster, including an unsettling "why does it seem to be moving backward? That's creepy" motion that is later explained, but was clearly visible before the reveal.

- it pretty much launches into the full horror pretty quick, without any real fake-out ramp-up moments, which I can appreciate.

- the initial mystery that's presented is interesting, and I enjoyed it at the beginning. Unfortunately, I liked it less and less as it continued and more was explained.

- the cast was fine.

- there were some neat creepy setpieces (abandoned hospital, Seattle underground tunnels), though I'm not sure they were used to their full potential.

- the opening credits had some neat design things, where duplicate letters in people's names did a cell-division type motion. It was a really little thing, but it was neat and memorable and thematically fitting.

- I guess I'm glad the twist wasn't just "ooh, she was just ~crazy~ all along".

BUT AS FOR HOW I REALLY FEEL:



I thought the twist and how it was explained and dealt with was stupid as hell.

Quick plot summary, in case you haven't seen it, but are reading this: The monster of the film is a mostly-human-looking creature that is going around gruesomely murdering some seemingly random targets, starting with the main character, Emily's, abusive husband. Emily is somehow directly witnessing the murders themselves, as if she were in the room when they occur, but is unable to intervene. She goes to the police, who are initially skeptical... then grow suspicious as they discover that all the victims have connections to her.

Here's the big spoiler: the "monster" that's hunting and murdering people is actually Emily's evil semi-conjoined twin that was mostly surgically removed from her as a child, except that because they were joined at the brainstem, part of him was just sort of squished into her skull. When her abusive husband smashed her head into the wall, it woke the evil twin, "Gabriel", up. Now he's seeking revenge against the doctors that tried to remove him and treated her when they were children, plus their biological mother who gave them up into the care of the medical facility.

Most of the film seems to be going for a relatively standard "paranormal" type horror setup - Emily/other characters/the audience glimpse Gabriel when the lights flicker (and text during the opening credits reveal he can somehow absorb and utilize electricity), he clearly has superhuman strength, Emily can hear his voice, but he also makes phone calls and speaks through the radio. It's revealed that Emily spoke to him throughout her childhood as an "imaginary friend", though she insisted he was real, and he tried to convince her to do horrible things. She claims that he's "the devil." As it starts to seem that the victims are related to her childhood, and that maybe she's somehow been involved, then it sort of veers closer to a "demonic possession" type story.

Buuuut it wants to subvert that and go for it being a physical thing rather than any sort of paranormal or demonic entity. The ultimate explanation is that Gabriel has been taking control over her body to commit the murders, and has been using their mental connection to make her *believe* that she was elsewhere, going about her normal life, while he was doing this. This sort of treads the line between "accidentally unreliable narrator" which is a thing I can enjoy, and "unfair mystery" which is a thing I don't.

More or less, I just couldn't ever suspend my disbelief enough to buy into the explanation.

There are still SOME paranormal aspects that it keeps as "real" - the superhuman strength, the never-explained "eating/absorbing electricity" thing (which I also hated for being inconsistent), the ability for Gabriel to speak through radios and cell phones... so I wish it would have just stuck with a fully paranormal explanation instead of what they went with.

Some earlier scenes don't make sense in light of the explanation, which in my opinion is what pushes it into that "unfair mystery" category, and makes this a BAD twist. I am of the VERY STRONG opinion that a good twist is one that casts the rest of the work in a new light once the twist has been revealed. This does the opposite - it makes earlier scenes into plot holes.

One of the better creepy scenes (imo) is very early in the movie (and was also in the trailer), which is where the abusive husband walks into a dim room lit only by the static on the TV, and sees "Emily" on the couch. But as soon as he turns on the light, she vanishes, but the camera pans to the couch cushion, and it shifts like there's something sitting on it.
...except this isn't something being "shown" to Emily as a false memory; it's from the husband's perspective, so it makes no sense if Gabriel is a purely physical entity in Emily's body.

There's no indication given that Emily truly has any special healing abilities - in fact, the wound on her head keeps breaking open and bleeding. This is revealed to be because Gabriel is LITERALLY breaking through her skull, and then just... closing it back up? But he also snaps all her joints out of place so that he can use her body while facing "forward" out the back of her head (which is why the physical actress was actually moving backwards)... and somehow she was never even slightly sore from having all her joints dislocated and snapped back in. Maybe we're supposed to assume she's super great at healing or doesn't feel much pain... except the first scene we see her in is her coming home early from work because her back hurts so badly during an advanced pregnancy. (This is absolutely nitpicky, and is the kind of thing I would happily ignore if everything else made sense, or if it had been given an explanation, but... it just added to the things that bothered me.)

As much as I mostly liked the practical effects, a couple of the later "fight scenes" when Gabriel took control and decided to fight the whole police precinct came across as comical, ridiculous over the top action scenes in a way I don't think they were intended to.

The dramatic emotional moments ALSO often made me try not to laugh. I don't think any of the cast were bad, I just really couldn't buy in to the big, heartfelt "I may be adopted, but you're my REAL family" speeches.

(AND ANOTHER THING: The adoption didn't seem to be a secret... except from her sister (the younger bio daughter of Emily's adoptive parents.) It's a specific scene where Emily gives her an "I want to be a mother because I've always wanted to know what it's like to be related by blood to someone... because... I'M ADOPTED!" speech. But her mom isn't surprised or upset by Emily coming to later ask about the adoption. It gave it kind of a weird tonal inconsistency regarding that.)

And dear god, I feel like I could go decades without seeing another "female protagonist of a horror movie is primarily motivated by childbirth/miscarriage/infertility" and they would STILL be overrepresented. It's not that those AREN'T big themes that feature in many people's lives, or aren't a very real-life source of fear and anxiety, or that there aren't movies that explore those themes well, but it seems like it's frequently lazy shorthand for character motivation. Emily does have a miscarriage early on, after the first time Gabriel attacks, and it's stated that it's happened to her multiple times before. Considering that part of the plot is that she and Gabriel were given up by their unwed teenage mother, it's not totally unrelated to the rest of the story, but... the thing that finally seems to give her the strength to wrest control back from Gabriel is her sister telling her that Gabriel is responsible for her miscarriages because he was absorbing the fetuses to gain strength. Which... comes out of nowhere, because we'd just been told that he "woke up" when her husband threw her into a wall, so it doesn't seem like he was aware enough previously to do something like that, and also, fucking how, when their only point of connection is the brainstem? And I frankly hated that being her ~truest~ motivation and strength.

Closing thoughts:

If the movie had wanted to go for the "body-horror over-the-top monster mutation" thing, then it should have gone for that. If it wanted to be a "creepy paranormal murder-mystery evil entity" thing, it should have gone for that. And as much as I sometimes enjoy genre and subgenre mashups, this particular blend it went for did not work at all for me.

The best aspects were, imo, the visuals... and for the melting room visuals (plus explorations of motherhood/adoption/being the victim of a past you weren't a willing participant in/possession-but-not) I'd rather watch the Silent Hill movie again.
And for the best scenes of Gabriel seeming to flicker in and out of existence with the light, and one of the murder victims lit by neon lights outside his window, plus a murderous creature from a character's past, I'd way rather watch Lights Out again. (Not as big a fan of how that one was a "this monster is a manifestation of someone's mental illness", but overall I really enjoyed it. And to be honest, the more I think about this one, the more it seems like all the aspects I did enjoy were completely lifted from that movie.)