Review of Malignant (2021) by Scienceadvisor — 11 Sep 2021

Technically this is great, however it completely fails as a horror and is a schizophrenic comedy without any apparent structure. It is not scary in the least, and it makes no sense. It was like a child with ADHD was asked to tell a story while they were high on Halloween candy. The downside is that the 'story' is incoherent, trying to be everything at all times with reason. This leads to dialogue and motivation that the director could not handle, and the acting appear to be poor, yet if you have seen enough bad movies, you know these actors and actresses are doing the best with the material they have. Some are comparing Malignant to Evil Dead series, but that is a superficial comparison as that classic series had an infinite amount of structure compared to this.

The real shock is that this does have a lot of fun moments, and may be worth a watch if you are into these movies. This does not change the fact that it is not a good movie. A lot of reviewers fall into the trap of thinking that if they like it, it must be at least a 7. This is quite possibly one of those movies, where it is objectively not very good based on what it wanted to accomplish, but is entertaining in unintentional ways that elevate it.

Just be prepared to have a bit of a headache, and the need to mutter WTF over and over, after the movie ends. The twist is highly predicable, but due to the pathological need to do nothing in the standard method, you will never guess how it is carried out. If there was any logic to this, then the cast could actually follow and give a more grounded performance (again this in on the director, not them). So hopefully when this gets a sequel, it will try to be a bit more coherent while acknowledging it was an accidental comedy, and leaning into that.