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This Gruesome 2021 Horror Movie Might Have the Most Jaw-Dropping Twist Ever
Tell that evil little voice inside your head to just cut it out already.
The 2021 horror film Malignant (stream it here on Peacock!) isn’t so much a straight-up horror movie as it is a whodunnit (or maybe a howdunnit) mystery — a patient, creepy puzzle bound by a gruesomely supernatural horror theme.
Spun from the masterful horror mind of James Wan (stream his creepy new series Teacup on Peacock beginning October 10), alongside Akela Cooper (M3GAN, American Horror Story), and Ingrid Bisu (Wan’s real-life wife who also plays a minor cop role in the movie), Malignant diverges from a lot of recent horror flicks — including Wan’s own output — by taking its sweet deliberate time in setting up, and then paying out, its slow but well-earned surprises.
Revisiting Malignant: One part murder mystery, one part horror flick
Malignant isn’t the kind of horror movie that’s overly obsessed with juicing its key story beats for maximum-surprise impact. Instead, it’s more about yanking you in and getting you invested in all its possible causes and outcomes than in jump-scaring you out of your chair at every turn.
The movie teases mystery right from the start, as a sinister force wreaks deadly havoc across a creepy Seattle hospital in a 1990s flashback scene. Fast forward decades into the present day, and Malignant kicks in with a not-too-happy couple trying to avoid their third miscarriage — a wish that’s tragically denied after expecting mom Madison (Annabelle Wallis) wakes up anguished and confused in a hospital bed, only to learn that her abusive husband Derek (Jake Abel) is dead and her baby long gone.
The police pop in to ask about Derek’s death, while Madison’s sister Sydney (Maddie Hasson) frets more over the miscarried child and Madison’s tortured emotional state. Once she's back home, Madison soon begins having supernaturally strange visions — as if she’s actually on the scene as a witness — of a freaky, black-clad figure who carries out murders while also sensing her nearby presence. It’s a creepy pattern that soon begins repeating, all while Seattle detective Kekoa Shaw (George Young) politely presses his inquiry into how Madison’s visions and the killings seem to be connected.
Madison genuinely doesn’t know what’s causing her deadly-accurate visions, which eventually prove so prescient that they lead Kekoa to anticipate the next murder before it actually happens. An adopted child, she dives with Sydney into a pursuit of her own missing childhood memories, which eventually leads back to that scary (and now derelict) 1990s hospital. It also leads Madison to the shocking re-discovery that she’s been harboring a parasitic twin — a gnarly little demon named Gabriel — in the back of her head, and that Gabriel has roused from a lifetime of dormancy to wrest part-time control over Madison’s body away from his sister-host.
A hidden horror twin?! Where Malignant gets really weird
Yep, that makes Madison herself (or at least her commandeered body) the actual killer the police have been seeking. And if that sounds bonkers, Malignant’s way of showcasing each murder as it happens only adds to the general mayhem.
Wan plays with perceptions in each bloody slasher scene, framing Madison as a third-person witness to the murders rather than suggesting, through first-person close-ups, that she’s somehow directly involved. The whole parasitic-twin idea isn’t really meant to explain things in plausible science-y terms anyway. No real human body can contort the way Madison’s has to in order for Gabriel — whose eyes literally reside, all Janus-like, in the back of Madison’s head — to carry out the dastardly deeds he does. Plus, there’s also this weird, repeating theme with each killing that suggests Gabriel holds some inexplicable power over nearby electrical objects (not to mention the local telecommunications grid).
In other words, Malignant’s medical explanation for all the death and destruction is merely a neat story convention, not some overt attempt at persuading viewers that its hidden-twin hijinks are shrouding the sort of real-life sci-fi secrets that are being horrifically hushed up by our friendly neighborhood research hospitals. The way the movie ends, in fact, leaves Madison in a spot where she could even slide comfortably into the role of a someday sci-fi comic book hero… if, that is, Wan and the rest of the creative team ever decide to revive Malignant’s story in future media.
Naysaying critics of Malignant couldn’t deal with the movie’s intentional blurring of the lines between science and reality — probably, we’re guessing, because its research-based premise strikes just a little too near to viewers’ expectations about what’s “real” onscreen and what’s simply a projection from Madison’s mind. For everyone else, though, Malignant is a moody, almost procedural murder mystery with a sweet side strain of slow-boiling horror… and, if we’re being really honest, it’s probably one of Wan’s most watchable and entertaining films.
Stream Malignant on Peacock here! And for even more Halloween-season horror, check out all the great scares streaming on Peacock all month long!
