Malignant Review & Hidden References You Missed

The Wonky Tone & Cast

Now I’m gonna get a little more down on the movie. If Wan’s latest picture excelled in visuals and concepts, I’ll be the first to say that the actual execution of the story left a lot to be desired.

Let’s talk tone: it was all over the place. For a lot of people, the mix of serious horror and gore with tongue-in-cheek comedy was barely a hump to get over, but for others (including myself) it was really jarring at times and made it hard to become fully immersed in the movie.

We start off with some really serious, classic horrific concepts. Madison is a victim of domestic abuse, she’s a tired, exploited worker, and she appears to be the victim of a horrible home-invasion. Cool, that all checks out, right?

Well next thing we know, the police are sweeping her house after her husband’s wonderfully gruesome murder and we’re thrown into some side-plot about the police partner’s rapport and a blooming romance with their fellow crime-scene investigator. Where did that come from?

It makes it hard to get fully invested in a character when you’re being fed half-arsed bits of background about them as a side-note to the main plot - especially when their progression is so discordant with the main story. Do I care about Detective Shaw’s romantic interest in his colleague or in Madison’s sister? No, not even a bit. So why are we wasting run-time on them?

With an ensemble-esque cast like this, it’s to be expected that there will be a side-plot. However, the cops’ story was so unrelated and pointless that it did nothing for me but detract from engagement in the main events. It also sort of made the characters less likeable: when you’re trying to humanise them and have them joke around, at least try to make it fit in with the more serious tone otherwise they just come across as vapid and super irritating. I know I was meant to like Shaw and his partner and that random girl that was obsessed with him, and the actors themselves were good enough, but good god every time they interacted I was just cringing.

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