Malignant (film)
Sep. 3rd, 2022 08:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
landingtreeMy flatmate Evelyn and I watched this movie tonight, as recommended by rachelmanija. Thank you Rachel for this experience, which we both enjoyed! I had read in her post that it was very strange; I read the summary of the early part with a villain who drinks electricity, and that there were further twists. This sure is true! This post is not so much a review (read Rachel's for that) as a list of things that are strange. In fairness, while watching I often hopped up from my chair to stir risotto, so it's entirely possible I missed normal explanations for several of the more batshit ones. Minimal spoilers above the cut.
After someone shouts "He's drinking the electricity" in the intro, and then the villain takes control of all the electrical items in the hospital ward, there is still a bit in the opening credits sequence - surrounded by gruesome medical imagery - where doctors' reports appear on the screen and a pen highlights the words "He appears to be able to control electricity".
In the next spooky object scene, once we've moved to a more sedate haunted-house pace in the present day, the three objects taken control of are a blender (ominous), a fridge (possibly the least ominous appliance to take control of, also, why do electrical powers let you open a fridge door?) and... a sofa cushion. This does have an explanation later, but at the time we looked at each other and said "Okaay, um... Is the cushion electrically warmed?"
The camera loves to swoop from strange angles. There's a wonderful weird shot looking down on the protagonist, Madison, moving through the house from more than a full story above. There are also many other points when a camera is rotating which normally would not be rotating, some also work really well, others are just... there.
Then, suddenly, this isn't a slow sedate haunted house film! There are police on the case!
Detective: "I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you a few questions"
My flatmate Evelyn, who went to fashion school: "I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you a few questions about the horizontal stripes on your shirt"
Madison's sister turns up to her hospital bedside in a Disney Princess dress, I said this out loud to Evelyn moments before the detective said "Is that a princess dress?" and the sister says, "Yeah, I work in a mall." Or maybe it was kids' parties. In any case, it never comes up again. One of the detective's co-workers is into him, and that comes up twice but is never relevant either. The abusive husband, killed early in the movie, is only mentioned a couple more times. So little daily life is happening, yet the hints we get are so odd. (Why is everyone in the police holding cell that stylish?)
I mainly recognise faces from context, so when a new character appeared leading tours of the buried underlayer of Seattle a third of the way in (which is repressed! Like - a murderous psychic might be repressed!) I just assumed it was Madison, and was impressed/amused that the movie had waited this long to inform us that she had such an incredibly hauntedness-adjacent job. I kinda assume my confusion was what the movie wanted? since Madison's job is mentioned but no other information about it turns up, and it worked as a good fake counter to the 'it was her! possessed! all along!' hypothesis, but to people who instinctively notice noses there may be no such ambiguity. This confusion made a later moment where woman crashes down through Madison's ceiling to land at (apparently) her own feet *way* more disconcerting.
I had read just enough of the spoiler section ofrachelmanija's post to guess that the killer's face was the back of Madison's head, because she kept finding blood there. This left me wondering how on earth she could not have noticed another face growing Voldemort-like underneath her hair. What I decided at first was that she did know it was there, and that her several miscarried children had actually been born as monstrous children of the thing on the back of her head, and that when her husband asks her why she bothers to keep the pregnancy when "it's only going to happen again", what he means by 'it' is that their house will be haunted by a fourth demonic elongated foetus ghost. This is not very plausible, but in fairness, nor is the truth, which is that the evil face is concealed inside her skull, which splits open to reveal the face attached directly to her brain*. This is an evil twin twist I have not seen before.
A doctor, discussing the murder of his colleague just before his own murder: "I can't think why anyone would want to kill her. She always seemed a good person to me. Don't talk about that one experiment we did. It was a different time." You know, the eighties, when we studied evil electrokinetic parasite twins - then abandoned our research and left all our records sitting in our gigantic locked gothic hospital. Like, did they find more promising angles on the electrokinesis thing? Was the evil twin part overtaken by the advance of the paranormal sciences? Were the hospital records never checked in the investigation of the deaths of six other doctors at the time?
Perhaps my favorite of many incidental details: the killer stabs a surgeon with one of those incredibly sword-shaped decorative objects people keep in their offices for just such occasions as these, *then takes the object away and forges it into an actual sword* for use in all subsequent murders. (It gets glamorous sword of destiny macguffin lighting).
rachelmanija. Thank you Rachel for this experience, which we both enjoyed! I had read in her post that it was very strange; I read the summary of the early part with a villain who drinks electricity, and that there were further twists. This sure is true! This post is not so much a review (read Rachel's for that) as a list of things that are strange. In fairness, while watching I often hopped up from my chair to stir risotto, so it's entirely possible I missed normal explanations for several of the more batshit ones. Minimal spoilers above the cut.After someone shouts "He's drinking the electricity" in the intro, and then the villain takes control of all the electrical items in the hospital ward, there is still a bit in the opening credits sequence - surrounded by gruesome medical imagery - where doctors' reports appear on the screen and a pen highlights the words "He appears to be able to control electricity".
In the next spooky object scene, once we've moved to a more sedate haunted-house pace in the present day, the three objects taken control of are a blender (ominous), a fridge (possibly the least ominous appliance to take control of, also, why do electrical powers let you open a fridge door?) and... a sofa cushion. This does have an explanation later, but at the time we looked at each other and said "Okaay, um... Is the cushion electrically warmed?"
The camera loves to swoop from strange angles. There's a wonderful weird shot looking down on the protagonist, Madison, moving through the house from more than a full story above. There are also many other points when a camera is rotating which normally would not be rotating, some also work really well, others are just... there.
Then, suddenly, this isn't a slow sedate haunted house film! There are police on the case!
Detective: "I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you a few questions"
My flatmate Evelyn, who went to fashion school: "I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you a few questions about the horizontal stripes on your shirt"
Madison's sister turns up to her hospital bedside in a Disney Princess dress, I said this out loud to Evelyn moments before the detective said "Is that a princess dress?" and the sister says, "Yeah, I work in a mall." Or maybe it was kids' parties. In any case, it never comes up again. One of the detective's co-workers is into him, and that comes up twice but is never relevant either. The abusive husband, killed early in the movie, is only mentioned a couple more times. So little daily life is happening, yet the hints we get are so odd. (Why is everyone in the police holding cell that stylish?)
I mainly recognise faces from context, so when a new character appeared leading tours of the buried underlayer of Seattle a third of the way in (which is repressed! Like - a murderous psychic might be repressed!) I just assumed it was Madison, and was impressed/amused that the movie had waited this long to inform us that she had such an incredibly hauntedness-adjacent job. I kinda assume my confusion was what the movie wanted? since Madison's job is mentioned but no other information about it turns up, and it worked as a good fake counter to the 'it was her! possessed! all along!' hypothesis, but to people who instinctively notice noses there may be no such ambiguity. This confusion made a later moment where woman crashes down through Madison's ceiling to land at (apparently) her own feet *way* more disconcerting.
I had read just enough of the spoiler section of
rachelmanija's post to guess that the killer's face was the back of Madison's head, because she kept finding blood there. This left me wondering how on earth she could not have noticed another face growing Voldemort-like underneath her hair. What I decided at first was that she did know it was there, and that her several miscarried children had actually been born as monstrous children of the thing on the back of her head, and that when her husband asks her why she bothers to keep the pregnancy when "it's only going to happen again", what he means by 'it' is that their house will be haunted by a fourth demonic elongated foetus ghost. This is not very plausible, but in fairness, nor is the truth, which is that the evil face is concealed inside her skull, which splits open to reveal the face attached directly to her brain*. This is an evil twin twist I have not seen before.A doctor, discussing the murder of his colleague just before his own murder: "I can't think why anyone would want to kill her. She always seemed a good person to me. Don't talk about that one experiment we did. It was a different time." You know, the eighties, when we studied evil electrokinetic parasite twins - then abandoned our research and left all our records sitting in our gigantic locked gothic hospital. Like, did they find more promising angles on the electrokinesis thing? Was the evil twin part overtaken by the advance of the paranormal sciences? Were the hospital records never checked in the investigation of the deaths of six other doctors at the time?
Perhaps my favorite of many incidental details: the killer stabs a surgeon with one of those incredibly sword-shaped decorative objects people keep in their offices for just such occasions as these, *then takes the object away and forges it into an actual sword* for use in all subsequent murders. (It gets glamorous sword of destiny macguffin lighting).
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Date: 2022-09-03 07:57 pm (UTC)LOLOLOLOL I remember having the same feeling! For ages I thought the kidnapped tour guide was Madison and her scenes were flash-forwards!
I had totally forgotten Disney Princess Sydney and the possessed sofa cushion.
What I decided at first was that she did know it was there, and that her several miscarried children had actually been born as monstrous children of the thing on the back of her head, and that when her husband asks her why she bothers to keep the pregnancy when "it's only going to happen again", what he means by 'it' is that their house will be haunted by a fourth demonic elongated foetus ghost.
Seems reasonable.