HBO notified me that they were removing this film soon, so now is as good a time as any to check it out. I don’t know much about this. I know that James Wan made it, and I have a lot of faith in that man’s work. I hope for fewer attempts at jump scares, but I have a suspicion that there will be a few attempts. The cast is mostly unknown to me, which is fine. With a name like Malignant, what is the first word that you associate with it? For me, it is tumor. Will there be cancer or a tumor in this? Sure….why not? I truly have no clue. Okay, time to enjoy spaghetti and a horror flick. I just want this to be a 6 or higher.
Start Film
We start in 1993, and we have a Dr. Weaver talking about Gabriel getting stronger and more malicious. Gabriel has some crazy powers. He is going crazy. A lot of bodies, a very hurt security guard, and at most, Weaver tells him that he has been a very bad boy. And Gabriel can broadcast his thoughts via radio. It’s time to cut out the cancer. Also, what the fuck is Gabriel? He can control electricity. Is Gabriel human is my obvious first question. My other question is wondering if this whole film is going to be about cancer.
Present Day
Madison is pregnant and comes home to her man, Derek, who is just trying to watch some MMA. Derek is a dick because he keeps knocking her up and the babies keep dying inside of her. Jesus, it only took 3 minutes to make Derek absolutely despicable by ramming the back of her head and body against the wall. And of course, he’s sorry. She’s the one that works. The back of her head is bleeding. In all fairness, she appears to keep him around and that is all on her. Oh, he used to be a drinker and has excuses, it was an accident. Sir, you are the reason that guys have a hard time with women. Your nuts should be cut off and you should be sent to live in Boston.
Derek is sleeping on the couch and wakes up to the blender operating on its own. Then the fridge opens up. Good tension building. The TV is changing channels rapidly and a shadowy figure is on the couch, but when the lights come on, nobody is there. There Is more sound and then the figure appears to hit or stab Derek in the head. Madison wakes up, was it all a dream? And her head is still bleeding. You really should get that looked at. Derek is down on the ground and the shadowy figure approaches and chases her up the stairs. It bangs on the door and she is flung to the ground, bangs her head, and is knocked out. That poor lady’s head. Oh, Madison was found by the officers in the nursery. That seems important.
We meet Det. Kekoa Shaw and Regina Moss, and a pretty girl named Winnie. Madison wakes up with her sister, Sydney, at her bedside. Sydney, stop petting the top and back of her head. That has to kill. The baby is also dead.
Kekoa comes to asks Madison questions, but she is just laying there. Wow, she had 3 marriages within 2 years. Derek apparently kept the sisters apart. Moss is checking out Derek and all the hand marks are upside down. They’re thinking it is Madison due to the abuse. I guess the next initial question is how Gabriel is connected to the house or Madison.
Madison is now back home, took a shower, sorry fellas but no nudity in this one, and she notices the street light turning on and off, and then stays off. Now her electricity is kinda fucked. She panics and locks all doors and closes curtains, but one of the doors is open. There are noises coming inside the house. The door opens again. I feel like her sister wouldn’t have let her stay alone the first couple of nights. She locks herself in a room, possibly the nursery, and tells herself that it’s all in her head. I hope this isn’t going to be like Lights Out.
The next day, Madison adds locks to many doors. Sydney stops by, but she can’t enter. Madison stares at the wall where she got her wig pushed in. Madison claims that she was going to leave Derek but then got pregnant. Madison wishes she had a blood/biological connection with someone. Madison was adopted. Her birth mother died during pregnancy.
Some lady is giving a tour of the Seattle Underground. After the group leaves, the lady unplugs a lot of lights and now there is clanging. You can see where this is going. Yeah, walk into total darkness while a stranger is making noise. I choose not to feel sorry for her. She is spooked and finally plugs in a light, but gets attacked from above. She wakes up tied to the ceiling of an attic. Gabriel is communicating via the radio. He has been waiting a long time for this, but first Dr. Weaver. I gotta say, I like the music in this, but not sure about the sound effects.
Gabriel calls Dr. Weaver and tells her it is time to cut out the cancer. Well alright. She asks who this is, but she has a good idea since she looks in a book and finds a picture. And we get a soft rock ballad.
Madison’s electricity is fucked again. Okay, here’s my prediction. I want to say, I have no idea where this story is going. I didn’t want to ruin anything. We’re dealing with pregnancies, miscarriages, adoption, electricity, and cutting out the cancer. It seems feasible to me that Gabriel is the unwanted brother of Madison. He had some shit wrong with him, he never got adopted. He now wants sibling revenge. He was the malignant cancer that was cut out during their birth. So that tells me that we will definitely get a scene where Madison tries to find out more about her birth mom, hopefully through the biggest scam of all time, ancestry.com. Also, Gabriel will kill Sydney so he can have his sister all to himself and the male detective will also die. Those are my current predictions and I won’t change them, no matter how wrong I am. And rest assured, I will be wrong.
Jesus, well, just had my first semi-jump scare, more startled as I didn’t jump. Watching this while listening to headphones and the sound of whatever was running offended my ears. Madison is doing the laundry and Dr. Weaver is yelling at her via the washer window and says that she’s in her house. Maddy can’t move. Okay, so she was yelling at Gabriel and she witness the assault on Weaver. The medical award should be a weapon, damnit. Ohhh, and he grabs it. She asks him what he wants, and he says to show her what the cancer has become, and then stabs/bashes her to death, and Maddy sees it all play out.
Moss, Kekoa, and Winnie are all on the scene. Okay, is there something far more sinister to Winnie? They have made her a little weird, but she leaves an impact every time that she’s on screen. Weaver specialized in child reconstructive surgery. Hmmm. Gabriel is doing some shit with that aware and grinding it or maybe sharpening it. I really like Detective Moss. Oh yeah, back in the attic with tour guide lady who just had the award flung at her with great force, but didn’t hit her.
Madison tells Sydney about her vision of Weaver. Kekoa is obsessing over this one picture of what looks to be a younger girl. That is most likely Madison, right?
Now we meet Dr. Fields who is talking to somebody about how good Weaver was, but he said not to speak about Simion. He was talking to John, but there is a lot of static and one of his windows is open. there are tracks leading into his walk-in closet. He walks in, finally turns on the light and the door starts to close. He cleans up the wet tracks. Gabriel is inside behind him. But then he’s gone.
Madison wakes up in bed next to Fields. Gabriel climbs over her. He has made that award into a damn fine weapon. Gabriel doesn’t really look human. Also, Fields got stabbed repeatedly in the face. Maddy wakes up and her head is bleeding.
Madison and Sydney go to the precinct and talk to Moss and Kekoa. Madison tells them where the murder was committed. Sydney is kinda funny and charming. Moss is making fun of Kekoa for buying this nonsense. Moss finds Fields. Back at the precinct, they have an artist rendering of Gabriel. Moss has the best line of the film. “So I’m putting out a BOLO on Sloth from The Goonies?” Fantastic line!! Madison uses the bathroom there and more eclectic nonsense. This is still better than Shocker. She gets a phone call and Gabriel says “Hello, Emily.” He says that her adopted mom gave her the name Madison and her Husband gave her the last name of Mitchell, but she will always be Emily to him. She asks who he is and he says that she knows who he is, even if they say that he is only in her head. “They” apparently told her that he wasn’t real. He says that he is going to make them all pay one by open. She says “Gabriel, No!” So she does know.
Kekoa had another dude age the old picture and it is Madison. Obviously….or is it? If Weaver was into child reconstruction, could we also potentially have a girl turned to boy situation, something in the same vein as Sleepaway Camp? Are we sure that picture is of Madison? We are not. As a matter of fact, it almost seems too obvious. I still say that Gabriel was Madison/Emily’s sibling, but I think Gabriel was a female at one point, and that is who the photo is of. Also, is there any possibility that this is some The Uninvited shit? Or is this just some supernatural shit? But they have my attention so far. But they also said that Gabriel was all in her head. So then Gabriel is an imaginary friend that Emily used to cope with things that happened with her real-life sister? God damnit, I can’t quite put my finger on this and I feel like I am so close.
Maddy tells Sydney that she knows Gabriel from her past before she can remember. Interesting. They go to visit their mother. Madison asks if she had a brother. She asks who Gabriel is. Mom is acting terrified. Time to get out the VCR to show a home video. It is her first birthday party with her new family. Maddy is talking to herself/Gabriel. Those cookies look good. When Jeanne is pregnant with Sydney, she was on a toy phone about not hurting the baby or mom.
Kekoa is working late again. He is has a thumb drive labeled E. May with a video about Simion on it, and there’s Weaver. The video is in 92. Woohoo!! Emily has been there for 7 years and has mental psychosis. She says that she is seeing visions and hearing thoughts from the Devil. She contacted Dr. John Gregory and Fields about this. Gregory is most likely next, right? Kekoa is reading my mind, and he gets Dr. Gregory’s address.
Maddy is brushing her teeth and sees Dr. Gregory in the bathroom mirror. She’s changing places again with her vision. Gabriel is behind her with the award dagger and Gregory is in the bathtub. Man, the cops in Seattle just break into anyone’s home. Oh, and Gregory is bloody as hell in the bathtub. Maddy is trying to tell Kekoa that Gabriel is still there. Kekoa puts up a good fight and is shooting. Gabriel is on the run. Gabriel is doing some crazy jumping. He must be into parkour. Kekoa, on the other hand, isn’t so good. But he is giving chase into some basement. Is this a boiler room? Is Freddy here? I feel like you don’t give chase. Jesus, Gabriel just kicked through a brick wall. Kekoa gets off a couple of shots but doesn’t hit Gabriel. Now he is in a room with old-timey stagecoaches. Is this the Seattle Underground? One gets pushed toward Kekoa. I can’t tell if this is cool or silly. Gabriel drops from on top of a stagecoach. Why is he having such a difficult time killing Kekoa? Gabriel just crawled out the ceiling like Spider-Man.
Kekoa tells Maddy that he thinks she was born Emily May. They ask Maddy if she would consider hypnotherapy. She needs some Hypnocil. Hopefully, the hypnotist doesn’t pull some Stir of Echoes shit. Maddy is remembering her new parents, but also how Gabriel was there too. He followed her home from the hospital. We see that Maddy ruined a cake for her sister and blamed Gabriel. So she gets sent to her room and she gets a call on her toy phone. Gabriel tells Maddy to do something to the baby. She grabs a butcher knife, always a good start, and heads straight for the cake. Even better. But then her reality wraps as we have been seeing. She is standing next to her parent’s bed with the knife and Gabriel tells her to cut mom. She does. Maddy starts freaking out so they have to pull her out from hypnosis. Maddy reveals that this has happened before, but she would wake up in strange places. Gabriel wanted Sydney gone or else Maddy wouldn’t need him anymore, and that’s what happened. Hahaha, Moss calls her out and asks her if she is saying that the killer is her imaginary friend.
Back to the attic and the girl has one arm free. Now she has freed herself. But now what? And why her? She falls through the floor and she was in Maddy’s attic. Hahaha. Maddy is in the back of a cop car. Sydney is trying to talk to the detectives, and Moss puts Sydney in her place. And then out of nowhere, Winnie pops in and tells the detectives that they need to see something. Winnie is my MVP and still the lynchpin to everything in some way. Winnie found the Dagger. Moss is dishing out a big ole “I told you so”.
The detectives are questioning Madison. Maddy gets pissed and the electric shit happens and she explodes. All the lightbulbs burst. The Kekoa’s phone rings. Maddy tells him that Gabriel wants to talk to him. Kekoa puts him on speaker. Gabriel wants his stuff back. Gabriel is talking mad shit. Notice that Gabriel always has that distorted voice. Could still be a girl. Please be a girl because I don’t want to be wrong.
Simion was the hospital and has been closed down since the ’90s. Sydney is going to the Simion hospital, which is like a fucking castle. Horrible parking job, by the way. Too close to the edge of a fucking cliff. This reminds me of many films, but Fragile instantly comes to mind. Sydney is checking this place out at night with only a flashlight. Fuck no. You bring like 20 people and do it in the daytime, and hope that you’re lucky. Record storage is in the basement.
Maddy is thrown in a jail cell with about 15 other women. Why is the one lady dressed like she’s from the ’70s? Sydney finds the record. “The result of an absorption in utero, growing in sync with patient”. Well, it ain’t no lie, bye bye bye. Objects are clattering. Sydney finds some VHS tapes. Time to watch with mom.
This is a rape of Serena May, age 15, who was raped and carried her pregnancy to term. She is going to entrust her children to their care. Note, she said children, not child. Serena’s mom wouldn’t help her because she considered it a transgression against God. Serena says “He’s an abomination.” Jeanne is pissed because they had told her that the mother died during the birth. Does that really change much?
Now our tour guide, Jane Doe, is in the hospital in a coma. Ohhhh, that is Serena May. Ohhhhh. Well, who didn’t see that coming after the previous scene?
Now we watch an Emily tape. Still in 1992. She is scared of him. She says that Gabriel tells her to do bad things to people. Sometimes her speaks words and other times the words are in her head. He pretends to be nice, but he is the devil. Okay, so Gabriel is attached to the back of Emily’s head, like conjoined twins. That is why they were able to sedate him and keep Emily partially awake. That would explain the bleeding too. Per Weaver, Gabriel is an extreme version of a teratoma. That is a tumor consisting of tissues, hair, teeth, muscles, and bones. It is a parasitic twin. This isn’t considered conjoined (thanks for making me look foolish), but one twin is underdeveloped and depends on the body of the other.
The women in the jail cell start ragging on Madison. Oh boy. Back to the tapes. They are showing cards with images to Gabriel and Madison is telling them what they are, even though she can’t see them. If he can do that, then he can make Emily see what he wants her to see. These jail bitches are roughing her up. This mouthy white bitch and the black bitch both start attacking Madison for no real reason. She has gotten the hell beaten out of her in this film. In the tapes, they try electroshock therapy and this causes all kinds of electrical chaos. In the ail cell, the lights flicker. Madison is freaking out. Ohhh, the surgery they did on Emily was to remove as much of Gabriel as possible and suppress and push the rest back in her brain. Fucking A. In the jail cell, Maddy has pulled apart the back of her head to reveal Gabriel still resides in there. Now Madison gets up and cracks her arms to face the other way and she marches backward since Gabriel is in control. Ohhh, let the bodies hit the floor. Okay, that got out of hand quickly. SHe killed all the women and a guard and got his keys.
Sydney calls Kekoa to update him on her discovery. Basically, when Derek smashed Maddy’s head, it woke Gabriel up. Oh no Winnie! She is putting away evidence. There is some clanking and Winnie has the dagger. She hears guys shouting and gunshots. Moss and Kekoa are gonna check it out. Gabriel’s liable to break into evidence. Winnie is hiding. She is being smart. The detectives are close. The lights go out in the precinct and Gabriel is killing everybody. The detectives enter the main room. Gabriel is a killing machine. So Gabriel is that fast that he can’t be shot. So many body parts snapped. Moss gets a good shot in and then gets her belly sliced. She now has a shotty. She is back to being my MVP. Hahaha, this is just silly shit here. Winnie survived!!! Kekoa is going to the hospital to protect Serena. Sydney is too.
The guard at the hospital has a pacemaker and he is beyond fucked. Sydney vs Gabriel, it’s on. Serena wakes up. She asks him for forgiveness. Kekoa pops Emily twice and Sydney gets in the way trying to protect her sister and Kekoa just got the dagger in his chest for his efforts. Sydney has the gun but hesitates. Sydney claims that Gabriel was feeding off of the miscarriages, which we don’t have proof of, do we? Gabriel shoots Sydney in the head. Now he is smothering Serena’s mouth with his glove, and she flatlines.
Madison is now bringing Gabriel to the alternate world. Maddy says that she is taking everything back and he can live in a world that she creates. She has locked Gabriel away in a prison cell. Her wound closes up. Sydney is fine, apparently. Madison has some strength. Oh and Serena is still alive too. Wow, so 6 of the 7 survivors are female? Assuming Moss survives, Winnie, both moms, both sisters. Jesus, talk about sexism. And there is electrical buzzing at the very end.
End Film
I can’t say that I wasn’t entertained by this. It was silly. We have seen aspects of this in other films and shows. Tales From The Crypt has 2 episodes that dealt with connected twins and a third one with Joe Pesci. What is cool, and I think will be enjoyable upon watching it a second time, is to really appreciate the movement style of Gabriel.
Is this a one-trick pony or are there layers? I think it is a film that probably is fine a second time through, but beyond that, all the twists and turns are known and you see how the seeds were planted. That’s not a bad thing. Most horror movies only get viewed once.
But let’s get critical for a moment. Say that we all accept the premise of this thing, this parasite living in her brain. I am fine with that because this is horror and I can accept that premise. What I am struggling with is why does Gabriel have some kind of electrical power. More importantly, why is he the most highly trained warrior in all of the land? It’s not like Madison has been practicing parkour or ninja skills in her spare time. Just because you think it, doesn’t mean that you can will your body to do so, right? So why can Gabriel will Madison’s body move so fast and lethal? I wish they had an explanation for that. The fact that they went out of their way early on to show just how vulnerable she makes me think that she has about as much athleticism and skill as I do, but with better hair.
Clearly, a sequel is there if they want it. But where do they go? Really, she has to be put away for the rest of her life in prison or a mental ward, right? She technically just killed like 15-20 people. What would a judge say? We understand it wasn’t you, just don’t let it happen again? So she would mostly start in a mental ward, and break free once Gabriel was set unleashed. But she also knows how to combat him. And would he just go after the detectives, moms, and Sydney? I guess I just made the sequel, but it’s not one that excites me. I feel like this should remain a one-and-done horror film. But we know that horror loves to milk an IP dry. And a sequel could draw marginally well. I’m not sure how the horror community will feel about this one. They liked Insidious so anything possible.
Final Rating – 6.6 – The build-up is really good. I also love psychiatric wards and finding out the story slowly. VHS tapes are good. The pacing for this film was on point. I liked the music but not the audio effects. Gabriel’s movements were cool. This was stylish and fun, and at times you wondered why you’re still watching. Then you realize you have 20 minutes left and just enjoy the ride. This most certainly isn’t for everyone, but I feel most horror fans should absolutely give this a shot. You may be in for a good story and a wild ride.
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