Malignant Review & Hidden References You Missed

Genre References

This is another thing that helped make this film a strong offering to recent horror cinema: it is full of references and homages, and the whole way through you can really sense Wan’s passion for the genre.

One of the most noticeable aspects of the film’s aesthetic is the Giallo-inspired thread woven into it. The Giallo look found its way into cinemas when Italian murder mystery paperbacks (always with yellow covers, hence giallo meaning yellow) gave way to a proto-slasher subgenre; heavy on the mystery, the twists and the bloodshed.

There are a number of visual references made to Giallo classics: Terror At The Opera is all over Gabriel’s choice to make Madison a helpless witness to his killings, even closer to this is Lucio Fulci’s Seven Black Notes in which a woman witnesses murders through psychic visions.

Gabriel as a villain is steeped in horror cliche in the best ways too. From his Giallo-inspired black gloves and leather coat get-up, to his hair-obscured face which gives a clear nod to the J-Horror craze of yesteryear, kicked off by 1998’s infamous Ringu.

Even the very thing that makes Gabriel a unique and unpredictable villain has been previously seen in the genre: with his gruesome face emerging from the back of Madison’s skull an unignorable parallel to 1993 Stephen King adaptation, The Dark Half.

I could go on for hours about all the specific references and similarities but you get the idea, and it’s most important to emphasise at this point that I think this is one of the strongest and most endearing parts of Wan’s latest offering. He knows his stuff and he wants to bring to modern horror what he feels is so strong about the classics, and good for him!

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