James Wan’s return to horror isn’t as triumphant as one would have hoped. Somehow, Wan comes off as an amateur with Malignant. A film that shows no understanding of tone, pacing, tension and atmosphere. Sandbagged by one of the worst scripts I’ve seen in a film in recent memory. One that offers pure exposition and a narrative that falls into every pitfall in storytelling. It seems that Malignant has no idea how cliched it is nor how expository it actually is. The acting is god awful and everything is nonsensical melodrama but most of that is simply an extension of the terrible script. Malignant is a typical disaster. There isn’t a single element here that works. There’s a lot of showmanship in the cinematography that’s meant to elevate the material but the imbalance of aesthetics and acting within the frame leads to a rather hilariously stilted experience. Malignant can’t even get its score right, and the moments in which a soundtrack plays or a score kicks in only amplifies the feeling of melodrama one gets from Malignant. The film literally uses a remix of Where Is My Mind? by The Pixies - the famous song from Fight Club - as the main soundtrack, and it’s as cliched as it sounds. Calling Malignant a B movie would be an insult to B movies. It’s simply an incompetent film that fails at even being an over-the-top, gory, high concept horror film.