! SPOILER WARNING
THE VIEWING GUIDE
A deep dive into the must-see moments from the month’s big release
Malignant
ONCE YOU’VE SEEN Malignant, chances are it won’t leave your head. Which is somewhat apt, as James Wan’s demented horror movie is based around one of the most audacious twists in recent memory; a gloriously ghoulish spin on that old horror trope, ‘the call is coming from inside the building’. Here, Wan and the film’s screenwriter, Akela Cooper, talk about the standout moments from their giallo-inspired, gore-soaked thriller about a woman who finds herself stalked by her kill-crazy imaginary friend…
THE OPENING
The film begins with a flashback to the ’80s, in which Dr Weaver (Jacqueline McKenzie), head of the Simion Research Hospital, is witness to a particularly bloody rampage by an unseen patient named Gabriel. It has flashes of the similar opening to Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator, but Cooper — who came on board as writer, with the original idea/story for the film coming from Wan and his wife, Ingrid Bisu — says that is entirely coincidental. “That was an addition by James,” she says. “He wanted that brilliant cold opening to set the tone for the movie, and to take the background of these horrible experiments and pull it to the forefront.”