SPOOPYWEEN DAY 18 MALIGNANT!!!

Day 18

Malignant

It’s been a day.

My aunt recently passed, and to be fair I wasn’t really even sure I’d continue with the rest of this months reviews. But I should. It’ll keep me busy for one, it’ll keep my mind on other things, that’s a good 2nd point. But also she would’ve told me to get shit done. So let’s get shit done.

So I picked a comedy. Because we need one.

Not just because my aunt loved comedy and couldn’t stand horror of any kind. But more so because, well.

We live in a world.

A world where…

People. People like the director of the new Halloween trilogy. Get to go out and decide. They want to retcon the Exorcist, and make a true sequel to the first film, and possibly a new trilogy.

And that. Is the most I will ever talk about Exorcist Believer, because that film does not exist in my reality, nor should it ever have existed in any reality. Ever.

This is coming from someone who absolutely hated the fact I watched Hellraiser Revelations and Hellraiser Judgement and felt there was nothing lower or sadder in this world for a film to become.

So we need a film that is, going to right the course.

We don’t need a horror film. Because believe me when I tell you, Malignant, is not a horror film. It is a masterclass of what-the-fucketry.

It is both a wild what am I watching, who made this and thought it was good type film.

And it is also a modern remake of Frank Henenlotter’s Basket Case, with a great deal more comedic stupidity, without the charm and fun of the original.

So absolutely this is the film we need right now in our lives to lift up our spirits, and remind us that even today. People can reach for the sun believing they are the new face of horror. Only to get slapped with a dildo in the face while eating their birthday cake.

It doesn’t make sense I know, but trust me, this film makes no fucking sense and this is just a warm up. So for those uninitiated with the film. Enjoy. Because oh god help us all, you need to turn off your expectations and just embrace the grandeur of stupidity on display. Now without further ado…

The Film

1993

It’s a magic year for movies. But not for this film. We begin our journey into the past, with the mansion/sanitarium/hospital from the House on Haunted Hill remake. Because why not? It’s a cool looking place, and what horror movie wouldn’t want to kick things off using a spoopy unholy huge hospital on a cliffside. During a storm.

We are getting a quick and dirty run down of what this story is about, and even this alone. Is comedy gold. Honestly you can’t watch this and NOT believe you are getting ready for something meant to be silly. Though it wasn’t meant to be at all. At. All.

We have a doctor blogging about ‘Gabriel’, and how they had to try and take him down. How he’s…a bit unruly and ill tempered. In fact he’s growling and snarling off camera and causing unseen mischief. Leading us to some quick and dirty facts to know about Gabriel….or Gabby.

Gabby drinks electricity.

They don’t actually drink it, like siphoning off of life wires. But it’s my favorite opening line from a side character, as he and our lead doctor are rushing down a corridor toward nightmare Gabby he tells her All the electricity in the building is going haywire, as if Gabby can control it ‘It’s like he’s drinking the electricity’

Now, I would love to see a monster just literally gulping down jolts of raw electricity. But no. We don’t get that. From there it only gets better. We snap to a security guard pulling out, a fucking tranquilizer rifle. From a huge case specifically made for this rifle. The absolute punch line of this scene. Of a huge case being opened, and parts being snapped into place and darts loaded into it, is seeing the actual rifle once its fully assembled. It’s like the tiktok of a guy being a smart ass bringing a huge rifle case into a shooting range asking if his high powered ammunition is safe for their range, and inside the case he has a nerf gun.

This thing looks like a pipe rifle from Fallout and its just…god damn its comedy gold.

So the security guard is useless. He opens a door, gets his arm pulled in by an unseen terror which snaps his arm so he can show us the viewers and go “OOOOH LOOK AT THE BLOOOOOOOD! THE BOOOOOOONES!!”, yes Debby we can see you watched some youtube videos on making cheap ‘scary’ severed bones, good for you.

We also learn that Gabby, looks like a puppet with backward arms. They are thinly veiled and that’s a good thing, because they look comically bad. But that’s not the important thing we learn, no. We learn that Gabby uses the power of electricity, to control radios, to give them a voice. As we hear a distorted spooky voice tell the doctor, their orderly, and whoever else is nearby “I will kill you all!”

So doctor lady says fuck that, and picks up the silly tranquilizer rifle. Shoots poor Gabby and delivers the best line to start the film off on its credit sequence.

“It’s time….we cut out the cancer.”

Aaaand scene!

Thank you, James Wan.

That’s it. That is our setup in the past. Gabby is a cancer that had to be cut out, went ape sit in a hospital and who knows what it could be, was, would’ve been. We will surely discover soon.

For now enjoy an old trope from the 90’s and early 2000’s thanks to films such as SEVEN and the SAW franchise for giving us heavy alternative music with quick cuts of medical images, text, distorted photos of procedures, and a mic of scenes to give illustrations to…events they don’t want to explain to us. Because it’ll give away things. Like the big twist. Which isn’t much of a twist so much as it is a funny moment.

Speaking of funny moments. Now that we are out of the past. It’s time to begin things in our present time. With our main character, Maddy.

Maddy is pregnant, and working. Madison, Maddy for short. Is a hard working lady with a loving boyfriend, who is absolutely emotionally unstable and violent at the slightest inconvenience to his day, and UFC matches.

See, Madison came home from work. Because her lil baby girl was acting up in her belly, so she needed to lay down, rest, take a Tylenol and take it easy. Which sounds reasonable.

Until her boyfriend/husband/dick daddy gets annoyed at this. “Maybe if you are in so much pain, you shouldn’t be working”, “Maybe you should stop getting pregnant”, “HEY! I Was watching that! How many of my kids gotta die inside you?”

It’s a huge escalation with really no motivation behind it but hold all questions please. He is trying to explain to his wife. His pregnant wife. That she needs to stop getting pregnant. Because she keeps losing the baby, But he’s gonna keep dumping his load into her baby maker without a condom because well, if he won’t listen to the government about mask mandates, they aren’t gonna mask up his dick!

Well Maddy just wants to chill in bed, no fighting, take a Tylenol and zone out. He counters her offer by calling her a bitch, grabbing her forehead, and slamming her into the wall so HARD….that the wall cracks, and is immediately splattered in huge amounts of blood.

She should not be awake right now, or barely moving. Let alone living. But she’s resilient and it was only a minor….severe….traumatic blow to the head. Plastering blood all over the wall and caving in the wall itself. No biggie.

He’s a little shook up by this, and immediately thinks to apologize to his honey bee. Surely he didn’t mean to slam his pregnant wife/girlfriend/belly warmers head into the wall cracking her skull. Surely he meant to just nudge her back.

It doesn’t matter, because he’s apologized now so obviously all is forgiven. As she crawls around on the floor cradling her baby bump, locking herself in the bedroom bleeding out the back of her skull. Which is leaking blood and ‘meat’ all over the door, her hand, the wall, and back of her head, and hair.

Obviously the solution here, as she discovers, is to simply go to sleep and dea with things in the morning.

I’m no doctor. Though I’ve played doctor with a few ex’s in the past. But I had heard, and have it on good sources. That when you suffer a severe head injury, especially one involving blood, brain matter, and skull bits to ooze out. You should seek immediate medical care. Sleeping is the worst thing you could do, and you will likely die. We’ve lost some celebrities to this, and Football players. Who are prone to comas and head trauma.

But no, she’s fine. Trust me.

Now, I could tell you how this of course is not a good thing, that this will end in a horrific night. But I want to instead talk to you about the true star of this film. It isn’t Maddy, or Gabby, It’s not the abusive sperm doner either.

It’s…

The house.

The house in this film, is an enigma. It’s like the Tardis from Doctor Who. A Harry Potter wizarding home.

Now it’s not uncommon in Hollywood, it does happen a lot. But there are times in films. Where a large house, the main stay of our family or host of characters stay, and the rooms looks vastly different in size compared to the rest of the house. As I said, its not unusual. It does happen.

But this film is special. This house, is a very slender house. A slender two story home. With what can be best described as a place my ex and I vacationed at near a beach front. It was a two story loft. The second floor lead to a bedroom, the downstairs was a kitchen living room and bathroom. It was cute and small.

That is what this house looks like, in its exterior.

Its interior however, is a grand, colonial style manor where each room is the size of the house itself.

The bedroom is the size of the living room, which is the size of the stairwell and entry way downstairs, leading to the living room, a guest room, the kitchen, a bed room, master bathroom, and upstairs is several bedrooms, master bathrooms, and an attic space.

All within this tiny home. It’s funny as hell, and I cannot stress this enough. The size is unholy off balance and funny as fuck. How this film was made as a straight horror film and not a comedy….I don’t buy. For one second. There’s just no way.

Well back to the story. Which is very. Little.

Much like the beginning scenes before the credits. Things happen with a bit of dialog and a shit ton of skipping ahead.

Maddy is sleeping soundly in her locked room, Sperm doner is in the downstairs bedroom, but he gets started by, wait for it. Sudden burst of electrical interference. Like a tv turning on and cycling channels. A blender turning on, spooky stuff. But not especially as it just sort of happens and then is over with. Yes he is going to die. He hit a woman, he’s an abusive dick. Dicks get what they deserve. So he encounters…A shadow monster. A figure in shadow which, lets face it, we know is Gabby.

Gabby has snapped his neck and turned him into a pretzel of the human variety.

Leaving a scared Maddy to roam the house and discover his body, only to be chased by Shadow Gabby. Which results in, wait for it.

The woman with traumatic head injuries who took a little nap, is now bracing herself behind her bedroom door, as she hears shadow Gabby pounding on the door, which eventually gives way. Slamming open, and Maddy ends up slamming her head, again. But this time on the floor and this time knocking her out.

THANKFULLY, she is resilient, and is able to wake up a bit later in a hospital with her sister. Police are investigating the ‘accidental’ death of her abusive partner and feel that, the woman with traumatic brain injuries, a bleeding skull, and a baby. MIGHT….might not be the one who did this. Since she claimed a shadow monster was in the house so, likely someone broke in, killed him, and spooked her into blacking out.

Or it could all be delusions from a woman with severe head trauma. Who knows.

Also, because they didn’t want to risk making this story interesting? When Maddy wakes up, her sister informs her, ‘oh hey uh, so you lost the baby’

And moving on!

Yes. Just like that. We are moving along. She is a survivor of a domestic abusive relationship, and now another miscarriage. But no one.

NO. ONE.

NOT ONE SINGLE SOUL

Seems concerned about her brain trauma.

Seriously. This lady had her goddamn head slammed into a wall and burst open like a grapefruit on the fucking wall, gets tossed AGAIN, to the floor. But she’s fine. It’s all fine. She’ll be just fine.

Now. Before you go asking follow up questions. We need to setup something real fast. Because this movie needs to keep you the viewer in a state of constant confusion.

IMMEDIATELY after we learn about the lost baby. We are magically teleported to the most interesting tour you can take in Seattle, but also one you need to avoid if you have allergies of any kind. The Seattle Underground City tour.

Why are we here? Don’t know.

But it’s a neat location. Just poorly used in this film. It’s a setup for a lady who is leading the underground city tour. As she ends up on her own after the group is gone, closing up….the underground…city. Trust me it makes no sense. But the main take away here is that this lady is about to become the weirdest kidnapped character in forever. Gabby is chasing after this woman. We don’t know why. We don’t know who. We just know that Gabby wants them, and so she has them.

She kidnaps this lady and takes her to the greatest place on earth.

But we’ll get to that, eventually. For now. We see Gabby, mostly. Imagine the Ring girl, but more moist and moving around like she needs to seriously pop her joints and she’ll feel a thousand times better. She has this woman, chained to a wall, on a very large…wheel type thing. In a very large room. Filled with antiques and furniture. Where Gabby is…fashioning a woman. Out of a statue.

Confused? Feel like I skipped over important movie details and just highlighted a scene or two out of ten minutes? Nope. I didn’t. This is how the movie plays out. Your confusion means you are paying attention to the film, and the film does not care to explain itself. We just all have to catch up to it.

Which Gabby sort of helps us with. As they use a nearby radio to communicate to their kidnapped victim. Explaining how they’ve waited a very long time for this moment. But first. They need to find a certain doctor. Who wanted to ‘cut the cancer out’.

So without waiting, or further explanation. Staby Gabby somehow locates the doctor, and breaks into her home. Ready to murder her, a lot.

Now this is mildly interesting, and would make for some really good stuff in a competent film. As Staby Gabby  stalks this doctor in her home. Maddie is doing laundry and, is startled. When she suddenly sees the face of that same doctor in her home. Slowly her home begins to dissolve, and we find Maddie in the doctors home. Seeing…well. What Staby Gabby sees.

So the two are linked to one another. Interesting right?

Well the film introduces this cool idea. But doesn’t go anywhere really with it. Just uses it for Maddie to scream in terror, and give us a reason to see the doctor get massacred.

And not just the doctor. Staby Gabby is out on a vengeance spree. They are going after the other doctor as well from the hospital that night.

Yep. Staby Gabby is planning on fulfilling their promise of killing them all. And thanks to google maps they apparently know where all of these people are. We can ASSUME, Staby Gabby got their information via the cellphone of the lady she kidnapped. Which then raises the question, who dis bitch?

Well that’s a very funny story we’re about to unravel and the film handles wonderfully.

As Madison grows increasingly crazy and questions this thing called life, and we the audience also question these things. We learn that. From Madison getting a call, from Gabby, AND a chat with her mother. That…Her mama and papa? Are not her real mama and papa. No. She was adopted!!!

And even crazier? Her adopted parents kept from her that she used to have an imaginary friend named….Gabriel. Who she would have ‘very odd’ conversations with.

Conversations like “Those aren’t your real parents, they’re fakes. Your parents abandoned you, also don’t visit new York on September the 11th. Trust me on this. Also you might want to invest in this company called Enron, I hear good things”

So yes. Maddy now knows her momo and popop are not hers. Gabby has been with her since she was young, and is now back with a vengeance, and a horrible, horrible monsterish flesh face. Which is also how I described myself on OKCupid and PlentyofFish while dating oddly enough.

So what does all of this have to do with anything?

Well. Get ready for fun times

Maddy is about to have a nice sit down with the detectives. Which Is another fun piece of this film. The main detective who wants to help poor Maddie. His name is Kekoa.

That is, a name. Yes. That is for sure, definitely. A name.

It stands out to me as memorable a cops name as that of Detective Shrek from Final Destination. Which was before the Shrek film, which makes it even better.

Kekoa has been working hard on the murdered abusive sperm doner case and break in by as his partner calls Baggy “Sloth from the Goonies”, he even got a lead on Staby Gabby when he discovered the 4th victim, an old man. A chase ensues, and it is one of the most goddamn hysterically funny chases in forever. Staby Gabby walks….runs. Backwards.

Yes. It’s an actor, running backwards. Crabwalking when running, and flailing their arms. Backwards. It’s. Jesus wept, its funny as shit.

So he chases them, to no avail. And ends up chatting with Maddie. Because through detective work, and a run in with scary Staby Gabby, he learned Maddy’s true identity. Which leads to a semi interesting story about her and Gabby from when she was a little girl, and Gabby told her to cut her fake moms belly to kill her unborn step sis. Which would be pretty important, but its underplayed by, get ready for this reveal.

A falling woman from the attic.

Not just any falling woman. The KIDNAPPED WOMAN!!

She cut herself free, fell to the floor, and the floor apparently was rotting in the magical house because her ass went flying straight through the floor to the ground level. Where Maddie sees her and promptly screams.

This kidnapped woman by the way? Her identity? Well don’t you know it. The lady is Madison’s REAL mom!

Shocking twist of shocking twist, I know.

So just a refresher. About the house of magic.

The kidnapped lady, was shown in a large attic building. With an industrial sized fan. In the wall.

I am not exaggerating this point. There is. A fan. In the wall. The size of two people. An industrial fan you’d have in a warehouse. I work in an Amazon Warehouse, we have fans smaller than this. AND larger.

This fan….this unholy large fan. Is part of a regular home. This room. This large separate building of a room, is the attic space of the ever changing house, with rooms that abide by their own physics. It’s like Doctor Strange’s summer home I swear to fuck. This is not a home attic space. This is the goddamn attic from the high school in Neverending Story. It’s fucking insane! Anyway….

Now. Its worth going over some small facts here. Also I recently bought a raincoat which looks exactly like Columbo’s raincoat so. I kind of feel like I need to ask some detective like questions here.

The story so far, for these cops is, a woman, claims a monster broke into her home, and killed her abusive husband, Other people begin turning up dead as well. All of whom seem somehow connected to her. When the police question her she tells them about Gabriel. An imaginary friend of hers, and how they tried telling her to kill her baby sister while still in the womb. And as she said “Anytime Gabriel would do something. I would get in trouble.”

So keeping this in mind. An imaginary friend, telling you to murder, and then people around you. People whom hurt you, now dying around you…Well. It doesn’t take much to assume you need to arrest her and question her properly about these murders, those people, Gabriel and have her examined.

Especially. When from that persons ceiling. Falls to the floor, a kidnapped woman. Held hostage, in the home of the lady with an imaginary psycho friend.

These are all grounds, to logically arrest her, question her, and look into having her committed for these insane murders.

But no!

All crazy legs McComa Maddie has to do, is whip out a cellphone during interrogation and oh hey Gabby is on the phone. This must mean they are super for real! There for setting her up! Right?

RIGHT?!!

But no. They hear a distorted static voice. There for Staby Gabby is real and obviously setting up Maddy.

THIS MAKES NO GODDAMN SENSE!

But it gets even funnier, and dumber.

If you haven’t guessed it by now. By my obvious remarks and what the film shows us, tells us about Gabby. Gabby who runs backwards, Gabby who is “Just a voice I always thought was in my head”, Gabby who showed up once Maddy had her head crushed in.

AND my comment about this being the funniest modern remake of Basket Case. Staby Gabby is a conjoined twin. A living tumor. A parasitic twin as the dead doctor tells us in a video. It’s a distorted twisted face, with little T-Rex arms that lives in the back of her head.

Thus the doctors comment at the beginning of the film about “It’s time to cut the cancer out”, because Gabriel is a tumor…get it?

DO YOU GET IT?!!!

So apparently yeah. The doctors tried killing the tumor twin, and ended up cutting off its arms, rib cage and….stitched its face into the back of her scalp and she just grew out her hair and presto. Tumor twin gone.

Only to be reawakened by the violent skull cracking wall banger head trauma. So yes. The two are linked sharing a brain, Seeing the murders as they happened. Etc etc.

None of that matters. Once we know she has a tumor twin on the back of her head. It’s time for the end game, and dear god. Oh sweet lord Buddha in a speedo, if you thought things were crazy already. This film is setting up some funny shit, and more what the hell am I watching.

Because Madison, is under arrest. So she is put in a holding cell. With other female inmates. Which is the fun part. This film takes place in modern day. The ladies in this jail. Are dressed, and I shit you not.

As 70’s dancers, 60’s prostitutes, 80’s punks.

It’s. Goddamn man, I don’t know what drugs they had on set, but that must have been a hell of a time.

All these bitches are gonna die.

They exist simply to be killed by Staby Gabby. While wearing bellbottoms, wife rim sunglasses, one piece polyester jumpers, and denim.

Each one of these ladies gets their asses torn out by Gabby. Throats torn out, and slashed. Arms broken, necks throttled.

Which would be scary maybe, or cool.

If not for the fact you have an actor running backwards doing matrix style karate while taring bitches up. It just doesn’t look good. At all.

Seriously. It’s just hilarious and everyone I have shown this movie too. And people I have seen watch it. All lose their shit laughing.

Not even when she kills these ladies in the jail. But she goes on a full on rampage through the police station. Where Staby Gabby gets even MORE acrobatic and shows off the kung fu they were mentally training themselves with.

It’s just so goddamn ridiculous you can’t help but laugh your ass off questioning what you are seeing.

So eventually we get a showdown in a hospital. Where Maddie and Gabby are fighting for control over their body.

You would think the final fight would be something epic and worth going through, but it’s not.

Yes detective Kerkoa..kerakoa. Detective Coca Cola survives. Barely. And ultimately when it looks like Stabby Gabby will win the day. Maddy’s lil sister comes in to save the day. Sort of but not really. She gets her sister to snap out of it and…..have a mental battle with Staby Gabby.

The two square off staring at each other. In their mind prison.

Where Madison must find the strength to fight off Gabriel. Which thanks to her sister, calling out to her. She is able to find that strength. How?

By telling her sister that all of her failed children that died in her belly. Even if they were the byproduct of an abusive shit, and he beat her pregnant or not around the clock. She didn’t lose those babies because she was sick. She lost them because Gabriel KILLED THEM! He used their precious life fluids to rebuild himself and come back!

So now, armed with the knowledge that her tumor twin ninja master Staby Gabby is the one who killed her unborn babies. Well she has all the strength she needs to defeat them for good and all.

How does she do so?

By closing her mind off to them.

Yep. That’s it. She just Thanos snaps her fingers and poof. Gabby is gone. Not just gone from her mind mind you. But her body.

This woman.

Madison.

The wonder woman.

Used the power of her fucking mind.

To literally. Not figuratively. But literally shrink and remove a living breathing tumor from her body.

With the power of thought.

So yeah. We see Staby Gabby sink back into the back of Madison’s skull, and just like that things are cool all over. For everyone. Even as Staby Gabby threatens “I will be back!” Maddy just tells her with the confidence of a woman hearing ‘Natural Woman’ on the radio “This time, I will be ready for you!”

And you’d think, wow. That is pathetically stupid.

It sort of is. But the movie is the gift that keeps on giving. They have one more line to give us before rolling credits.

Madison finds her step sis pinned to the wall by a large hospital bed which Gabriel through at her pinning her in place. So step sis says “Help me Step sis I’m stuck!” and then Pornhub music plays.

But no. She’s stuck, Madison tells her she will move the large hospital bed, but step sis tells her “No its too heavy you can’t do it”

And we get one of our two final gems from Madison. “It was always my body. Their strength is my strength” and just like that. She lifts the bed like the Hulk and frees her step sis.

The two embrace and during their tender moment Madison makes the mistake of speaking and says “All my life I yearned for a blood connection with someone. Yet in the end, it was right in front of me all along. You will always be my sister”

And with that, some lights crackle, music plays and we roll credits.

Bless your heart James Wan, you sweet summer child.

The End

I thought I laughed the hardest during a horror film when I watched “Pray for The Devil” this month. I was wrong. So so wrong. This film, much like Beetlejuice said of the Exorcist “Keeps getting funnier, every time I see it”. Which I also hate. Because this film should never willingly be watched. It should be experienced.

With a group of friends, a pizza, drinks, lots of drinks, and the warning “This movie is so fucking dumb its great”

That is how this should be enjoyed.

It also is a bit of a mystery to me. Because James Wan recently said he’d really love to remake some Frank Henenlotter films, like Brain Dead, Basket Case, or even Frankenhooker.

Dude. You literally remade Basket Case. Just not as well, and a lot funnier.

Basket Case is a film about a young man, Duane Bradley. He carries a basket with him and has found himself a nice spot in New York. He’s trying to get a life for himself while, also dealing with his twin brother, Belial. Who is his disfigured conjoined twin that doctors surgically removed from his side. Which Belial did not appreciate. Nor did his brother. So the two seek out those responsible for this, and begin killing them.

But Duane doesn’t want a life of murder, he found a girl he likes and she touched his penis in a special way so he kinda wants to stick around with her But Belial has other thoughts and the two end up at odds with one another. Leading to two sequels that just get more insane and funnier as they go on.

This movie was about a woman who had a conjoined twin…tumor twin, who sought revenge on those who tried to get rid of her and the two come to odds with one another and battle it out.

I mean come on. You did it man. Don’t purposely set out to remake something. Consider this a Tommy Wiseau moment. You made The Room, people love it for horrible reasons. Don’t actually set out to make a B horror movie with cornball humor. You already did it perfectly!

That being said however, this film is truly horrible.

The scares are boring. Which should not be the case, and also makes it feel a bit odd. I mean these kills are not skimping out on the gore. There is a good deal of blood and gruesome effects setup. They did not pull back on this at all. But how the kills happen. When they happen. It’s just…

Soulless.

That’s honestly the best way to put it. It’s sad but its true, and it shows. Theres just nothing there with the kills. They are violent, brutal, and gory. But there’s nothing ‘there’, if that makes sense. It just feels there simply to exist. To fill a need, or a scene.

Things happen so randomly and so quickly. That you can’t really hold onto why its happening, until you are quickly half assedly informed later on. Which is also rushed so it doesn’t really stick with you. It’s just. How to put it.

It’s like trying to be clever, with something you should have let breath and become clever. It doesn’t become clever simply because you told us it is, and we just need to keep up.

It’s sort of the problem I had with the second Knives Out film. It wasn’t as good as the first film, by far. But the story was  so boring and dumb that….the director tells you “That’s the point! As the main character points out, its just so dumb, it makes sense! That’s the joke”

But it’s not. Saying a thing is a thing, doesn’t make it a thing. It’s like when people started calling M. Night the new Hitchcock.

The man made a twist filled film that had people going. He made a cameo in it. This does not make the man Hitchcock. His later films proved this was the case, as all of his films were the same.  Yes even later when he made his eventual surprise sequels to Unbreakable. Don’t buy into hype. The man is just not Hitchcock. Hitchcock made clever plots and twist. He was a good film director and knew how to get reactions from people.

These films today, not so much. Like I said before, being praised for one horror film, that’s fine. Getting it for another? That’s well earned. But when you start letting your ego go unchecked and believe you can do no wrong and all that glitters is gold. You end up with Malignant.

A half baked idea with decent effects, boring scares, and a story that dares you to try and understand it while rushing through traffic at high speed listening to an audiobook while dodging cars.

Sure it sounds good in premise. But in reality its just a waste of potential.

The movie could’ve been a bit better, sure. The story could have been fleshed out. I get why it wasn’t. Some horror films just don’t get that treatment. But at the same time this was a film with a good long runtime to it of an hour and 51 minutes. That’s plenty of time to play around with that corpse and make something better of it.

In a lot of ways the film reminds me of the latest Conjuring film The Devil Made Me Do it.

It was an interesting concept and story. But the film itself was boring. I can tell you what happened, what the plot was of the first two conjuring films, but I cannot tell you anything that happened in the Conjuring 3 aside from the true story they based part of it off of. The rest is just….well yeah. When you watch a film several times, but still can’t recall the plot and what happens, let alone the scares. That’s saying something.

This film felt a little like that in that, instead of focusing on trying to make it intense, scary and bloody. They should’ve worked more closely on the story.

Fleshed things out a bit more. Dial back some of the murders or fuck, even try giving them time to happen.

This film went by so quickly with the murders, it’s like someone making a movie and suddenly realizing they can’t make their 3 hour Snyder epic film, so they have to rush the last 45 minutes to get in all the cool shit they thought of and hope it works.

Every single time Gabriel went to kill someone. It was a faster and faster repeat of the last. Like those Youtube videos that play at faster and faster speeds at one moment. We see the person to be killed. They walk around. They get killed. Then we see the next person. They walk around, they get killed. And the next and the next.

Had the movie spent more time with Detective Coca Cola investigating the murders, maybe finding little clues that might have lead to him suspecting Madison. Say like bloody foot prints, torn clothes, hand prints. Something. Hell even have Madison wake up from nightmarish murder dreams and find herself covered in blood, or clumps of the dead persons hair in their hands. A murder weapon. Something!

These things would have made the film far more interesting and fleshed out the story. Versus feeling like a sprinters race to the finish line.

Instead story and blood are slammed together in quick moments where you are meant to go “OOooooh so that’s why” “Oh so that’s who that is, damn”. But that’s also trying to turn a carnival horror coaster ride into something other than a carnival attraction I suppose.

It’s just sad because there could have really been something good here, instead of a so bad its good to watch with drunk friends film. Which even then it’s not, nor should it be a film that gets lumped in with cult status films. It doesn’t get that honor or deserve it. The movie just has rewatchability for being that silly and nonsensical. Which I mean I am glad for especially today. But at the same time. Like a lot of bad films. We kind of deserve better.

As the samurai saying goes. Your foe is not defeated, until they lay dead at your feet.

That’s not a real saying but I like it.

But same applies with filmmakers and films. Always remember where you came from, what got you there, and give the same dedication as you did the first project. The second project, and every other project. I know it’s easier said than done. But it can happen. Some directors do it. I like James Wan’s films. They aren’t all certified hits, or memorable sure. But the dude gets the job done. Like I said I can appreciate this film as a comedy and remake of Basket Case. But I can’t take it seriously as a horror film. Nor should any of you.

So yes, check it out with friends, beer and pizza, or consider it for a day you need a good laugh. Or an excuse to use Tumor twin. I’m sadly very proud of that one.

Anyway, it is the time for sleep, I am exhausted. This was a good laugh, and tomorrow will bring what tomorrow brings. So until then. Next time you get pushed hard enough into a wall to splatter brain and body juice on the wall and cave the wall in with the back of your head? Maybe call an ambulance. Or release your freaky tumor twin powers. I GUESS! Goodnight!