Abdulla Alsaleh’s review published on Letterboxd:
I thought that my next movie that I'd see in theaters would be Paul Schrader's The Card Counter, but Bahrain pulled that movie from theaters in less than a week, so I decided to set my eyes on Malignant. I wasn't actually planning on seeing this movie, as I've never been the biggest fan of James Wan's work, but after hearing that it wasn't like Saw or The Conjuring at all, I got interested in seeing Malignant in theaters, especially after hearing that it wasn't (and still isn't) doing very well in the box office. I'm honestly kind of glad that I underestimated Malignant, because that allowed the movie to surprise me with just how good it turned out to be.
Rather than honing in on being just one type of horror movie, Malignant feels like a blend of several horror subgenres, with some scenes feeling like psychological horror and others feeling more like body horror. There were even bouts of gory action which were pretty fun while also not feeling out of place within the context of the movie. I could also sense some giallo influences, and a lot of the movie's scenes even reminded me of Dario Argento's Opera, although those scenes were done in a way that was obviously very different from what was done in Argento's film. Speaking of how this movie reminded me of another movie, I realized that the film's bluish color palette looked exactly like the palette of Brawl in Cell Block 99, but that isn't exactly a positive point or a negative one. I thought that the movie's effects were all really cool, and the practical effects made some of the movie's darker and more disturbing moments all the more effective. I'm glad that I got the chance to watch Malignant in theaters, because I loved it in all of its bloody, campy, and disturbing glory.
