Malignant Review & Hidden References You Missed
Script & Pacing
Really this bad characterisation all boils down to the terrible script. For what was an excellent concept, the script was the real killer here. Some bits of it were so unbelievably bad that I heard audible chuckles in the cinema - and this wasn’t at the weird bits that were meant to be funny.
The film is, of course, meant to pay homage to lots of horror cliches but the script took cliche to a whole different level. There wasn’t homage, there was just crap, B-movie writing. Having a character, in what was meant to be a really emotional ending moment, unironically say that what she has been looking for has been ‘right in front of her all along’ is absolutely criminal. It’s frankly unhinged to think that that would land well, especially when delivered by Hollywood’s most wooden leading lady, Annabelle Wallis.
Aside from the horrible scripting, the film was done dirty by its own run time. I’m a strong believer that most stories can be told in ninety minutes, and at a hundred and ten this was just a bit too long. At times it felt like scenes were being added in or extended just to pad run time, like having Madison’s sister travel all the way to the abandoned hospital only to pick up a box and return home.
In its time, it should’ve been able to flesh out all the bits of plot that felt like they got lost, but instead some segments just felt like dead air. We never found out more about the time the twins spent in the hospital and what exactly they were subjected to. We had the plot open with emphasis on the horrible trauma that is losing your baby to a miscarriage or stillbirth, only to have that all almost immediately disregarded and then explained away later in a line about how Gabriel was feeding on the babies in utero.
That latter point especially hit a raw note with some people who are sick of women’s trauma being used as a plot device and, whilst it’s not anywhere near as egregious as other examples of trauma porn horror, I sort of sympathise with where they’re coming from.
[Concluded on Page 5]