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Malignant 2021

Started by SteveDave, September 17, 2021, 08:30:52 AM

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SteveDave

I don't normally start threads but this film has to be seen to be believed.

It was recommended to us by my brother-in-law and I honestly don't know if he did it as a "tee-hee, this is baaaad" or "This is a scary film that Mr and Mrs SteveDave will love".

Spoiler alert
The film begins with "someone" getting loose in a hospital in the past. Then it flashes 27 years later (or some time later) and we see our main character Madison who appears to be a doctor or a nurse but her occupation is never mentioned. Her abusive husband bangs her head off a bedroom wall and then he gets killed by a mysterious intruder. The police arrive and are baffled. Then some other people (doctors and nurses from the opening section) get killed but somehow Madison can see it all happening. Madison's annoying sister thinks Madison and the killer have a psychic link for some reason. A woman gets kidnapped from a tour of Seattle's underground city. One of the cops figures out who's going to die next and rushes to the doctors apartment in time to see him being killed by the killer. There follows a parkour battle where the cop falls at least 3 flights and lands on his side but then gets up to give chase. The cops go to Madison's house and the woman from the Seattle tour falls out of her attic. Madison is arrested and thrown into a massive cell with a load of retro-prostitutes who start beating her up for no reason. Meanwhile her sister goes to the abandoned hospital that her sister was born in to find a load of medical stuff including VHS tapes that show she was born with a parasitic twin on her back who could communicate with her. She watches these tapes with her mom and they're both shocked. Back in the cell, Madison gets angry and rips the back off her skull to reveal her brother's face. There's then 20 minutes of fighting and people's arms being snapped with bones protruding before Gabriel (her brother) goes to kill their birth mother (the woman from the tour). He shoots the sister in the head (and you see blood splatter on the wall) but then she's alright? In the end Madison locks Gabriel up in a cell (in her mind) and sets everything up for a sequel.
[close]

It's genuinely one of the worst films I've ever seen. So much money's been spent on it the sets and the fight choreography but none was spent on the script or acting. We're talking "The Room" levels of "WHAT? HOW?!" acting.

It's made by James Wan who for some reason I thought was the same person as Leigh Whannel but they're not. They just made "Saw" together.

0/5 but in a good way.

phantom_power

I really enjoyed it for the batshit crazy final reel. The rest is pretty perfunctory

Spoiler alert
As to your point. Gabriel doesn't really kill the sister and mother. The heroine just makes him believe that he has by trapping him in the same mind prison thing that she was trapped in when he did his attacks. She went into some sort of trance so she didn't experience his murders and she then discovered the power to do the same to him when she learned of his existence
[close]

I absolutely hated it. About 5 people on a gaming forum I visit recommended it in the same thread.

I was ready to bale at the 50 minute mark, but persevered because everyone was raving about it.

It reminded me a lot of Darkman, but where Raimi is doing something flashy he's going "wow, this is gonna look coooool!", always feels like yer Wan is going "wow, I am so cool".
He can't do schlock because he's too slick and soulless.

Absolutely fucking mind numbing. Terrible script, terrible acting. A huge misfire.
The ingredients were all there for a brilliantly fun romp, but it just didn't work for me at all.
It was knowing but without the sense to lean into that, without the wit to make that enjoyable, just flat, dead humour, and when it played things a bit more straight, it was emotionally numb and too light.

I like it when the tone is all over the shop, but this was just flat nothingness. They needed to ramp up the horror. It should have taken itself way more seriously for that first hour and a half rather than it just feeling like a dumb comic.

The ending was just far too little far too late.

edit: Oh, and the red letter media chaps did an episode on it just the other day, and they mentioned that that scene at the start, where the film shows it's hand and you think "this has to be a film within a film thing or something" and it isn't. They were bang on about that. It shows it's hand far too early. The first hour and a half needed to be serious, and actually good and then they needed to smack you in the face with the goofy shit.

SteveDave

#3
Quote from: phantom_power on September 17, 2021, 09:56:24 AM
I really enjoyed it for the batshit crazy final reel. The rest is pretty perfunctory

Spoiler alert
As to your point. Gabriel doesn't really kill the sister and mother. The heroine just makes him believe that he has by trapping him in the same mind prison thing that she was trapped in when he did his attacks. She went into some sort of trance so she didn't experience his murders and she then discovered the power to do the same to him when she learned of his existence
[close]

Ahhhhhhh. I was looking at my phone for most of the last 20 minutes trying to find out how much this cost to make.

joaquin closet

I loved it !

So fucking dumb. Terrible terrible script. All the murder set-pieces were great, as was the more actiony stuff towards the end. Woman drives a Prius up to a cliffside abandoned mental hospital. Epic.

Quote from: ImmaculateClump on September 17, 2021, 10:39:00 AM
It was knowing but without the sense to lean into that, without the wit to make that enjoyable, just flat, dead humour, and when it played things a bit more straight, it was emotionally numb and too light.

Personally very happy they didn't "lean into" the knowingness. Give me full commitment to a stupid script/idea over an ironic take (or semi-ironic middleground) any day.

Nah, that was my problem, it was too in the middle. It was tongue in cheek and winking at the camera from the very outset.
If you're gonna do that, you have to go all in.
I agree, I'd much rather they played it straight.
Having watched the RLM episode, it seems like they couldn't agree on what was and wasn't intentional or what was supposed to be ironic or funny, so I suppose that's up for debate, but that's how it felt to me.

I hated the action bit at the end. It went from a shit drama none horror to a crappy action film and I was like "ah right, so this is better is it? This is the bit everyone was telling me I have to stick around for?" get tae fuck.

Junglist

ImmaculateClump: Rllmuk?

Also yes it is absolutely fucking awful. Terrible, terrible film and Wan is still living off the first Saw.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth



Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

He also directed Insidious, The Conjuring 1 and 2, and Furious 7. Mostly a load of guff, but all very commercially successful.

Wan was live on no evil Saw, naw.

Junglist

It was more saying that he'll live off Saw as his strongest film rather than financially. Its his best film and everything since has been utter shit.

idunnosomename

Quote from: Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth on September 17, 2021, 02:33:00 PM
Not so much.
i had to look that up to see if Jay was exaggerating when he said Aquaman made a billion on the new HitB. Box office gross, but still fuckin hell

Quote from: Junglist on September 17, 2021, 02:29:48 PM
ImmaculateClump: Rllmuk?

Also yes it is absolutely fucking awful.

It's not so bad if you stick to the shmup thread :D I think I know who you are on there!

Junglist

Quote from: ImmaculateClump on September 17, 2021, 04:02:57 PM
It's not so bad if you stick to the shmup thread :D I think I know who you are on there!

Haha not hard to guess when I mainly post in the horror thread!

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: Junglist on September 17, 2021, 03:16:08 PM
It was more saying that he'll live off Saw as his strongest film rather than financially. Its his best film and everything since has been utter shit.
I'd probably rate Furious 7 higher. Saw feels like some nu metal fan's film studies coursework and Leigh Wannell's acting makes Vin Diesel look like Laurence Olivier.

Junglist

Saw blew my little mind when it came out, thought it was really well done. Not revisited it though, might do som

joaquin closet

Quote from: ImmaculateClump on September 17, 2021, 11:39:21 AM
Nah, that was my problem, it was too in the middle. It was tongue in cheek and winking at the camera from the very outset.
If you're gonna do that, you have to go all in.
I suppose I didn't see it tongue in cheek, winking... unashamedly ridiculous, sure, but not making fun of its own ridiculousness... not ironic

iamcoop

I thought the opposite.

My issue is that I think Wan took the first hour and a half very seriously indeed. When it did go batshit, it didn't go batshit enough.

The very first scene in the hospital, that didn't come across as intentionally camp and b-movie to you?
It was filmed like a batman fight scene!
The actors may as well have been winking at the audience between their lines.
That didn't linger and colour what came after it?

Noodle Lizard

I think it's a bit generous, especially given the nature of James Wan's other horror films. Obviously he's not going for Bergman, but I do think he's going for "scary and cool" rather than "(knowingly) stupid and shit". Long stretches of the film outside of the action bits feel very earnest (with domestic abuse and childhood trauma being "the themes"), but they are also terrible.

Among other things, I think he's very, very bad at directing actors - all the way back to Saw.

iamcoop

Quote from: ImmaculateClump on September 23, 2021, 01:18:58 AM
The very first scene in the hospital, that didn't come across as intentionally camp and b-movie to you?
It was filmed like a batman fight scene!
The actors may as well have been winking at the audience between their lines.
That didn't linger and colour what came after it?

To be honest you're right with that - the opening scene was pretty schlocky and therefore far more entertaining than the next hour and a half.

But you can't honestly think Wan was playing
Spoiler alert
a pregnant woman getting abused and punched in the stomach
[close]
as anything other than deadly serious?

I audibly groaned at the
Spoiler alert
first reveal of Gabriel after the husband gets killed
[close]
and thought "fucking hell, are we still
Spoiler alert
ripping off Ring
[close]
almost 25 years later?"

These sorts of rubbish films always remind me of listening to Adam and Joes XFM show where Joe does a feature on horror film tropes.

"Scary, hairy type monster running across the ceiling/across a corridor very quickly and screeching?

Check....."