While the majority of horror filmmakers in today’s society implement a tiresome focus on character rivalries and the oversaturation of special effects, other experienced auteurs would rather strip back the autonomy of a surface-level script and explore the grittiness of its raw story.
This case can easily be made for James Wan, who is notably responsible for a plethora of genre flicks that have resonated with audiences dating all the way back to 2004’s Saw. However, none of his other movies ever seemed as batsh*t insane and over-the-top as 2021’s Malignant.
Serving as the first horror film that Wan had directed since 2018’s The Conjuring 2, it was to be expected that the horror community was going to hold a certain standard. While a fair share of diehards argued that the movie was utterly ridiculous and just plain laughable, Redditors over on the r/horror platform agreed that the B-horror movie was nothing short of “dumb fun” while others applauded Wan for his divine creativity.
Along with the positive opinions on Reddit, the film’s encouraging reviews and glaring score on Rotten Tomatoes helped to solidify its status as a bona fide cult classic. In fact, the film was so well regarded, due to its engaging premise that centered around a brother-and-sister rivalry, that Wan actually revealed in an interview that the movie is “the horror version of Frozen” — simply for the fact that the two sisters in the Disney feature argue in the same vein as Malignant characters Madison and Gabriel.
Of course, when you compare a bone-chilling horror flick to an ever-popular Disney feature, it was only a matter of time until the horror community jumped all over it and critics poured out their reviews as fast as they could. For those interested in witnessing the film’s chaos, Malignant is available to stream on HBO Max.