Why Malignant Reviews Are So Mixed

Director James Wan’s latest horror movie Malignant has everyone talking about its bonkers third-act plot twist, but the reviews for it are mixed – here’s why. Malignant follows Annabelle Wallis’ Madison, a pregnant woman married to an abusive man played by Jake Abel. When the pair get into an altercation, Abel’s Derrick pushes Maddie into a wall, knocking her unconscious. She awakes later that night to find that Derrick is dead and she is chased by a demon-esque figure that leads her to lose the baby.

Throughout the rest of the film, Maddie witnesses several murders committed by this demonic entity who she comes to know as Gabriel. Her involvement in these murders is questioned by Detectives Kekoa Shaw and Regina Moss, but as Maddie and her sister dig deeper into her mysterious past, they discover something much more twisted. Gabriel is actually Maddie’s parasitic twin with superpowered abilities who was awakened when she was knocked into the wall by her deceased husband. This twist leads to a truly balls-to-the-wall final act that sees Maddie/Gabriel slaughter an entire police station before Maddie eventually locks Gabriel in a prison cell in her mind.

Upon release, reviews for Malignant were decidedly mixed. While many had praise for the third-act twist, others saw it as less than capable of bolstering the by-the-numbers plot that had come before it. Critics also found that, for a horror movie, Malignant wasn’t all that scary. Still, those who loved the movie absolutely loved it, while the detractors are just as fervent in their opinions. As of this writing, Malignant has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 76%, while Metacritic has Wan’s film at an even score of 50. Here’s what some of the more negative reviews said about the Giallo revival sub-genre inspired horror flick:

Wicked Horror: 

It’s tough to fully elucidate what kind of film Malignant really is. Likely, Wan’s delightfully deranged little shocker will remind you of several different horror movies at once, each wilder than the last – the opening sequence could be taken as a reference to the legendary opening of Jurassic Park, for instance – but there’s little truly innovative here because this is, at its core, still a mainstream, blockbuster horror movie, made by committee to capture the attention of as many film-goers as possible.

The Readers:

You can set out to make an intentionally bad movie and do a bad job at making that intentionally bad movie. Malignant is bad, both intentionally and accidentally. The Happening was a better time, which is the first film fight that turd ever won. If campy is your thing, pitch a tent elsewhere.

IGN:

Malignant is a conflicted miscalculation, bursting at the seams with ideas it never develops to a satisfying degree. Director James Wan seems unable to decide which genre will best serve Maddie and Gabriel’s story, and the resulting tonal mashup never quite feels cohesive enough to be engaging.

The Playlist:

In other words, if Wan had gone full tongue-in-cheek, selling out all other considerations to execute his insane concept and finale, that might have been fine; conversely, if the movie had developed its characters and created a real-world setting for this mad-cap lunacy, it might have passed that sniff test. Malignant does neither, going sort of halfsies in each camp, resulting in a film that isn’t especially scary or interesting.

One of the main complaints lobbied against Malignant is that it’s just not scary enough. Wan, who has launched several extremely successful horror franchises, is known for his terrifyingly effective jump scares and his latest is significantly short on those. Still, that largely seems to be the point. Malignant is laced with dread and the veteran horror director seems to be winking at the audience in many cases, not delivering jump scares when they would be most obvious and instead choosing to highlight the inhuman ways in which Gabriel moves and wallowing in Maddie’s increasingly anguished confusion surrounding her circumstances. Additionally, if there were more jump scares, would that insane twist have landed as well as it did? Here are some positive reviews for Malignant:

Collider:

However you watch Malignant, it demands to be experienced. I’m not a die-hard Wan defender, and yet this film is easily my favorite thing I’ve ever seen from the filmmaker. Wan has shown he knows how to scare audiences with films like Insidious and The Conjuring, and he also knows how to please them with movies like Furious 7 and Aquaman. Malignant is like a hybrid of the two, a grotesque and captivating mashup that knows how to use a horror framing to tickle and bewitch his audience.

AV Club:

Regardless of one’s math on the ratio of fun to dumb in Aquaman, there’s no way to watch this deranged follow-up and not conclude that Wan’s back where he belongs. Still, a little of that time in the superhero trenches seems to have crept into his supernatural comeback. Malignant is a zany psychodramatic creepfest that, here and there, veers into gory action hilarity, as though Pazuzu had taken over the body of a Batman movie.

The Ringer:

But even if Malignant is just a one-off project and not another Wan-enabled horror franchise, it feels destined to have a long shelf life, especially among genre enthusiasts. As perhaps the most WTF moviegoing experience since Serenity, Malignant is a film that has to be seen to be believed. Like its queasy subject matter, this unique and uncompromisingly strange movie has a way of staying in your head.

SlashFilm:

A movie that takes big swings is always worth celebrating, and Malignant, James Wan’s out-of-control return to horror, takes some of the biggest swings you’ll ever see on film. Wan hasn’t helmed a horror movie since 2016, and returning to the genre has seemingly unhinged him, or at the very least made him dizzy with glee. He’s a blockbuster filmmaker now, and here he uses his blockbuster skills and clout to conjure up a movie best described as “operatic.”

To some, a movie wherein the plot hinges on such a major twist may be lacking in some departments, but Malignant‘s special, yet divisive, third-act twist certainly begs viewers to go back and look for any groundwork that was laid for the reveal earlier in the film. Ultimately, the pros seem to outweigh the cons in Malignant‘s case. While it may not be the straightforward horror some wanted from Wan, it’s the chilling villain and truly mind-boggling third-act reveal is enough to elevate this movie from a so-so horror movie to a must-watch experience.

About The Author

Graeme Guttmann
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Graeme Guttmann is an editor, writer, and interviewer for Screen Rant. With a love for all things pop culture, he watches just about everything from the biggest blockbusters to reality shows like Real Housewives. He currently resides in Boston, MA where he is an MFA candidate at Emerson College for creative writing. You can follow him on Twitter @cryptograeme for pop culture commentary and random musings about pop music and just about anything else.

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