With a wickedly terrible script and hammy acting this is as close to a (unintentional) 90’s horror parody as you can get. Some lines of dialogue are like something from a long running British soap. Template, one-dimensional supporting characters fill out the cast, especially the cops; these guys are laughable and not in the way you might imagine.

Without spoiling anything, the twist manages to be both glaringly obvious and completely stupid and illogical. It’s a theme park horror ride. A cheap thrill. But, unlike a ride at the fair, it lasts way too long for what it is. The scariest thing for me in the film was thinking mid-way through that this might become another one of those unwanted Wan-horror franchises that we’ve turned our noses up at so many times the past decade.

Malignant may well be Wan’s ode to Giallo but it’s not the homage I lightly anticipated. It has the camp, but the other stylistic elements associated are nowhere to be seen. It’s as if Wan searched the definition of giallo online and went with that, as opposed to doing his homework on some of the Bava/Argento/Fulci classics from yesteryear. As a result, his well of inspiration is all but dry and it shows in the finished product.

Annabelle Wallis is a solid addition to the scream queen roster in that she does a LOT of it. Her performance is nothing special, but she is the centre of attention here and is by far the most well-rounded character in the film - although that wouldn’t exactly be difficult.

The design of the sinister presence, Gabriel, is a mixed bag. When he dons the long trench coat it is like he has just wandered off the set of a forgetful 90’s slasher film, or worse a fun house designed to scare 13-year-old kids. However, when we see Gabriel in his malignant form it harks back to the Cronenberg body horror classics of the 80’s. There’s one minor positive at least.

Wan attempts something new on his return to horror after a big-budget hiatus and it simply doesn’t work. It strikes me that the filmmaker has never even heard the phrase ‘less is more’ in his life. He resorts to cheap jump scares once again. I guess old habits die hard.

The marketing campaign and recent reviews I have read made such a deal out of letting the cinemagoers know that this time around things would be different. Yet, I see so many of the mistakes from Wan’s previous efforts rear their ugly demonic heads here once again, so what’s new?

Perhaps one of the main reasons I love to hate this film so much is that it claimed to be a throwback to a sub-genre which I have really grown to appreciate. The works of the aforementioned Italian directors become more and more like pieces of art as the years go by, aging like a fine wine. It’s films like Malignant that really pull these films back down to low-art level.

This a totally misguided effort by Wan and co.

2/10