Thread by @ReviewsPossum

I'm watching Malignant, the latest tumor from director James Wan.

The movie starts in 1993, and we see a comically evil-looking research hospital. Some lady named Dr. Florence Weaver is recording a video in her office about how someone named Gabriel is becoming "stronger" and "more malicious", and soon, they won't be able to contain him.

Suddenly, a security guard comes in and tells her "he got out again" and they rush to his room in a shot filmed with a wide-angle lens where we see clear vignetting in the corners. You can tell this wasn't intentional because the vignetting disappears when they switch lenses.

This whole prologue has the vibe of a horror movie from the '90s. It's hard to explain. It might have something to do with the extremely rapid ramp-up in urgency without us knowing what's going on, combined with the cheesy acting. It sets an unintentionally funny tone.

They managed to knock out Gabriel with a tranquilizer dart after he kills someone and they strap him down. Doctor Weaver tells him he's been a "bad, bad boy". We can't see him clearly, but he's apparently deformed. He reminds me of Rubber Johnny.

Rubber Gabriel then uses a nearby radio to say "I will kill you all" in a cartoonishly evil voice. One of the doctors says "he's broadcasting his thoughts", but something about the way he delivers the line is unintentionally funny.

Dr. Weaver looks right at the camera as it dramatically zooms in on her and she says, "It's time we cut out the cancer." Then we get an opening credits sequence with music reminiscent of Marilyn Manson's Resident Evil theme.

We cut to present day and see our protagonist, Madison, who's pregnant, coming home to her scumbag boyfriend, Derek, who proceeds to slam her head into a wall, so she locks him out of the bedroom.

Later that night, Derek wakes up on the couch to the sound of various household appliances turning on by themselves. He looks around the house and makes his way back to the living room where he sees a black figure sitting on the couch who disappears when he turns the light on.

Madison wakes up to the sound of the Black Mystery (or BM as I'm gonna call it) breaking Derek's neck. She goes downstairs and sees Derek all fucked up, and the BM proceeds to chase her. She tries to lock herself in the nursery, but it breaks the door down and knocks her out.

Some time later, the police arrive and find Derek's body, then we cut to Madison waking up in the hospital where her sister, Sydney, tells her Derek is dead and she lost the baby. The next day, police detective Kekoa Shaw asks Sydney if she knows if anyone wanted to hurt Madison.

Sydney (who's dressed like a Princess because she works at some place called Family Planet) says she doesn't know because Derek kept Madison away from her family. Shaw says the doctor told him Madison has had three miscarriages in the past two years, which Sydney didn't know.

Detective Shaw and his partner, Regina Moss, find out that Derek was abusive to Madison, and because there was no sign of forced entry, they suspect they have established a motive.

Two weeks later, Sydney (who kind of looks like Kira from The Dark Crystal) drives Madison home, and we get this melodramatic scene where Madison mopes about how she couldn't protect her baby.

Later that night, Madison sees the street light outside flickering, and thinks she sees BM outside coming toward the house, so she runs around, frantically locking all of the doors and windows, but finds the back door open.

Madison rushes to the bedroom, and we get this top-down view of the house as she runs from room to room. This would make symbolic sense if the movie had a doll house motif like Hereditary, but it's unmotivated here, like they did it just because they thought it would look cool.

Madison locks herself in the bedroom and tells herself it's all in her head. The next morning, we get a rapid montage of Madison boarding up the windows and installing dead bolts on the doors, then Sydney shows up, having climbed up to the second floor window like a teen movie.

They have a conversation which somehow leads to Madison telling Sydney that their mother told her she was adopted, which I guess Sydney didn't know. The music ramps up dramatically to punctuate this revelation with unwarranted gravitas.

We cut to Madison giving a tour of the Seattle underground which I guess is her job, but I think they just needed an excuse to film in a creepy location. The group leaves, then the lights start going off one-by-one in that cliché horror movie fashion, and she gets attacked by BM.

Madison wakes up tied to a wall with duct tape on her mouth in some kind of attic. BM uses the radio in the same way Gabriel did earlier to tell her it's been waiting a long time for this, then uses her phone to call Dr. Weaver.

Okay, I'm not sure what's going on, but I thought the tour guide woman BM kidnapped was Madison, but then we see Madison in her house a couple scenes later, so I guess this is a different women who just happens to look so much like her that I got them confused.

BM calls Dr. Weaver and tells her "it's time to cut out the cancer", but she doesn't know what this means. We then cut to Madison at home when she suddenly sees a psychic vision of BM attacking Dr. Weaver while dressed as a bad guy from Kingdom Hearts.

BM beats Dr. Weaver to death with her "Excellence in Surgery" trophy, then Madison snaps out of the vision and we cut to the police finding Dr. Weaver's body next to the base of the trophy. BM apparently took the top part. Then they find Dr. Weavers files and decide to take them.

We see BM sharpening the top part of the trophy into some kind of weapon, then Madison sees a news report about Dr. Weaver's murder and tells Sydney about her vision. At the police station, Shaw finds a photo of a kid in Dr. Weavers files and tells another officer to age it up.

We then cut to the other doctor from the prologue, Victor Fields, talking on the phone about Dr. Weaver when the phone suddenly stops working and he realizes his window is open. The movie fakes us out a few times, then we cut back to Madison in bed.

Madison has another psychic vision, this time of BM stabbing Dr. Fields to death with the sharpened trophy while terrible CGI blood splatters all over, then Madison sees BM's fucked up face featuring an eye that looks like an asshole.

Madison wakes up and tells Sydney what she saw, then they go to the police station and tell Shaw and Moss to go to Dr. Fields' apartment, so they go and find his body.

The police make a sketch of BM based on Madison's description. I talked about how police sketches work in my review of Scarecrow, so I'm not going to bother explaining why this doesn't make sense.

Madison goes into the bathroom and gets a phone call from BM who tells her he's just getting started, and she spontaneously calls him Gabriel, confirming she has a repressed memory of him.

Madison and Sydney then go to their mom's house and ask her about Gabriel, and she tells them that when Madison was a kid, she used to talk to Gabriel, but they thought he was just an imaginary friend or something, and conveniently, they even have some of this on tape.

Back at the police station, Shaw finds some flash drives hidden inside some of Dr. Weaver's books. He finds a photo of Dr. Weaver along with Dr. Fields, and another guy, Dr. Gregory, who he assumes is the next victim. Meanwhile, Madison has another psychic vision.

Shaw rushes to Dr. Gregory's apartment but is too late to save Dr. Gregory. Madison tries to tell Shaw that BM is still there, but he can't hear her psychic transmission, so BM attacks. Shaw manages to fight him off and chases him into some abandoned building, but he escapes.

I forgot to mention that Shaw got the digitally aged up photo of the kid and it turns out Madison was a patient of Dr. Weaver.

Shaw goes to Madison and tells her he found out her birth name is Emily May, and has her talk to a hypnotherapist to unlock her repressed memories. She remembers when she was a kid and Gabriel nearly tricked her into killing her mother who was pregnant with Sydney at the time.

While that's going on, the woman BM has tied up in his hideout manages to cut herself loose, but then she falls through the floor, and it turns out she was in Madison's attic the whole time. The police then find BM's coat and trophy knife in her attic, so she gets arrested.

During an interrogation, Madison makes the lights explode, and then Shaw gets a phone call from BM.

Meanwhile, Sydney gets Mom to give her Madison's adoption papers, and she finds out about the hospital and decides to go there, but it's been shut down since the '90s. Also, even though it was daytime when she first saw the building, it somehow got dark by the time she parked.

Sydney breaks into the old hospital and starts making her way to the records storage. While that's happening, the police throw Madison into a big holding cell with a bunch of other women, even though the phone call from BM would seem to indicate she wasn't wasn't lying about him.

Syndey finds some old VHS tapes and watches them at Mom's house. They find out Madison's birth mother, Serena May, was a teenage girl who got pregnant through rape. Meanwhile, the police find out Serena May is the woman who was tied up in the attic, and she's in a coma now.

Sydney and Mom watch another tape, this time of Madison at the hospital, talking about how BM— her brother— would tell her to hurt people. And this is where the big twist is revealed.

BM WAS MADISON'S CONJOINED TWIN!

The tapes go on to explain that BM and Madison actually share a brain, so when they tried to surgically remove BM, they could only remove him partially, and just shoved the rest of him inside her skull.

While that's going on, Madison gets beat up by the other women in the holding cell, when suddenly, BM emerges from her skull and brutally slaughters all of them. This one dumb cop sticks his arm through the bars to try to shoot him, but he grabs and kills him, and takes the keys.

Sydney drives to the police station and calls Shaw on the way to try to explain that BM is inside Madison, but he doesn't believe her. But then Shaw and Moss hear gunshots and stock scream sound effects coming from inside the police station, so they rush back in.

BM makes his way down into the evidence storage and gets his coat and knife back, then starts killing all of the cops because he inexplicably knows kung fu. Shaw and Moss try to shoot him, but he escapes.

Shaw reasons that BM is going to the hospital to kill Mom, then we cut to Sydney arriving at the hospital. A security guard's pacemaker explodes because BM has electricity powers which are never explained, and then BM attacks Sydney.

Shaw shows up and shoots BM, but then BM throws the knife at him and kills him. Sydney picks up his gun, but BM throws a hospital bed at her and pins her down with it, then he picks up the gun.

Even though BM is in the body of a 128 lb woman, he inexplicably has super strength. Also, his face is on the back of her head, so he has to face backwards at all times, so he shouldn't be able to apply the proper leverage to lift a hospital bed, much less throw one.

BM pins Sydney down, but before he can kill her, she does the whole "I know you can hear me, you have to fight it" thing, so Madison finds the strength or willpower or whatever to take back control of her body, and she and traps BM in some kind of mind prison.

BM recedes back into Madison's skull, then Madison, realizing she apparently has super strength, lifts the hospital bed off Sydney, then they hug and the movie just kind of forgets about the bullet hole in her torso.

The movie ends with a shot of a lamp buzzing as if to imply BM is still around. It's never explained how he affects electronics. I assumed that was one of his psychic powers, but it turns out he was only apparently psychic because he and Madison share a brain. I don't know.

Also, it turns out BM was the reason Madison miscarried so many times. Somehow, Sydney figured out that he was "feeding off them".

Malignant is like a poor man's Basket Case if Basket Case wasn't already a poor man's Basket Case.

It's awfully convenient that the surgery trophy happens to be made of solid metal and is shaped like a sword for no particular reason.

Early on, Derek sees someone sitting on the couch and they disappear when he turns the light on, and then he sees the cushion rise up as if an invisible person was getting up, implying some kind of ghost. But later, we find out it was Madison. Does she have ghost powers?

Repeatedly throughout the movie, we hear this song that I thought sounded familiar. It turns out it's some kind of horror remix of "Where is My Mind" by Pixies.

So Sydney explains that Madison's miscarriages were caused by BM, but she also says Derek slamming Madison's head into the wall is what caused BM to wake up after being dormant for the past thirty years. So he caused all her miscarriages before he woke up?

Also, how did she know that?

Is this a parody? Because the first two-thirds of Malignant are played really straight and feel like a typical stupid modern horror movie (except for the prologue which is goofy), and it doesn't become silly, off-the-wall schlock until the final act. What was the intent?

I feel like Malignant would be a lot better if it was made on a tiny budget in the mid '80s. I don't know if it's meant to be some kind of throwback to those kinds of movies, but if it is, it doesn't come across well because the production value is too high and modern-looking.

I don't think I can recommend Malignant. The crazy shit doesn't happen until the last third, and until that point, it's just a generic and rather poorly executed horror movie. While competent on a technical level, it's not scary. It's just downright stupid for the most part.

The only real value is if you're in a theater with a bunch of people who don't know what's going to happen. If you're alone, it's not worth waiting an hour for a twist that's going to be shocking for about a minute, and the more you think about it, the less sense the twist makes.