The film, conceived by James Wan and Ingrid Bisu, and written by Akela Cooper, begins simply enough with a setup akin to so many supernatural horror films. And then watch it again to be certain you saw what you just saw. If you haven’t seen Malignant yet, you should stop reading this immediately and go watch it. James Wan’s latest, Malignant, feels cut from the same cloth as those aforementioned features, destined to be a neo-cult classic. These are movies that are uniquely and completely made for the enjoyment of their creators, and if the rest of us happen to catch on, well, good for us. It’s that you can watch them and feel like you’re getting a piece of the filmmaker’s unfiltered consciousness - for better or worse. It’s not that any of these films share commonalities besides their rather dismal box office receipts and polarizing audience response. I’m talking about films like Southland Tales (2006), Grindhouse (2007), Jennifer’s Body (2009), Jupiter Ascending (2015), A Cure for Wellness (2016) and mother! (2017).
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Every once and a while, a genre film comes along that’s so off-the-wall, so against the grain of the current pop-culture zeitgeist, and so wholly the work of a filmmaker’s id and formative instincts that it’s difficult to believe any major studio would give it the green light.