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| Malignant in YTS |
James Wan freewheeling
Malignant is really a strange creature, certainly the strangest, out of the ordinary, dazed and absurd ever conceived by the author of Saw - The Riddler. By his own admission, the film was born both from a surprising concept and developed following careful research, and from a personal fact that the director "felt the need to eradicate from his mind", even to be exorcised, finding right in the film machine the way to beat one of the greatest horrors of our times.
Looking at it closely, one is then surprised and even stunned by the amount of exaggeration put in place by Wan, by the irrepressible mix of genres that ranges from body horror to unbridled action, from the detective story to family drama. Malignant is a capacious and amused container of the playful inventive talent of the author, here freer than ever, indeed fearless and often even naïve in not knowing how to regulate himself, so hypertrophic as to be even cheeky, without inhibition, only eager to explode in all his madness that goes far beyond mere psychological horror.
The film wants to surprise in its strangeness and give fans a new experience, a vision of mainstream horror able to break the production barriers raised in recent periods and return with arrogance to a series B soul while still exploiting a series aesthetic. A, as indeed the author. James Wan doesn't mind containing himself and in fact Malignant is the direct exasperated translation of his irrepressible passion for cinema.
Indeed, it seems that at the moment - perhaps together with Saw - the title in question is in effect the most free and authorial of the director, who wanted both to pour his passionate love for horror into the project as well as his proficiency in action sequences.
To a skilful management of spaces, lights and voids, therefore, Wan adds long chases - even vertical ones -, shootings, fluid and direct hand-to-hand with an exhaustive and precise competence, all to give the film a great breath and allow it to expand until the final act where everything becomes clear, perhaps even opening up at the beginning of a new franchise.
What is certain is that Malignant is not the film that is expected and the exit from the theater is more guaranteed between astonished laughter, satisfied or amused, than between restlessness and anguish.
Strange to say, we understand it, but it is the film itself that directs the audience towards a similar mental path, because it is unable to be one and instead eager to be other, something that remains in any possible declination, also defined as ridiculous, bizarre, unexpected, alienating.
A title to be swallowed quickly, with voracious hunger, but with a long and complex digestion, perhaps even intolerant for some. But it is precisely this tendency to indigestible and savory cinematic that makes it appetizing and with a lively and marked taste. It all depends on your stomach and your patience, but we assure you that the dish served by James Wan is junk food of the highest quality.
James Wan's Malignant is the horror you don't expect. Distant from his previous works in The Conjuring and Insidous, the film with Annabelle Wallis is actually a dysfunctional mix of genres that "knows how to go around" and become intriguing, solid and even fun, amidst so much and unsuspected action, the usual lucid management. and punctuality of spaces, lights and voids, and a story based on an absurd and in its own way brilliant concept born from medical research and from one of the most famous urban legends of all time.
Between body horror and action films, detective story and psychological drama, Malignant is probably the freest, most alienating, even ridiculous but perfectly authorial film by James Wan, who with this title gives fans of the genre and his fans of the High-quality cinematic junk food, deliberately with a B-series soul and A-class aesthetics. An oddity that you will not easily forget.