Malignant - Cheap Thoughts

A time-honoured tradition when a filmmaker provides a major studio with a big box-office success is the promise of a future project where they can have as much creative freedom that they want with as much money as they want. James Wan is without argument one of the most influential directors in the Horror genre of the 21^st century, spear-heading iconic franchises such as Saw and The Conjuring, even his lesser works like Insidious somehow become recognisable staples. With that being said, Malignant might be his most inventive and engaging horror movie yet, certainly the loudest if that means anything to you.

From the opening scene, Wan sets the tone of the exact movie you’re in for, a violent, supernatural colourful film with an unexplainable yet engaging hook that you’re dying to know more about. The rest of the film carries that over splendidly, the lead performance of Annabelle Wallis offers such range of emotions that she can be put up alongside all the other iconic horror film performances that should (but inevitably won’t) be nominated for an Oscar. A character that has suffered severe trauma, and now in her darkest hour she finds herself at the centre of a disturbing mystery. She carries the film as an empathetic yet disturbed character, though that is not to take away from Wan’s direction.

This is definitely the most experimental Wan has gotten with his directing style. The way he moves the camera with slow purpose to build suspense, presenting unconventional angles to either show or hide as much as the audience needs like the best storytellers in horror. Heck, even the action movies of his filmography don’t use the camera as well as this film does during it’s minimal yet effective action beats. His command of colour to bring style, a blend of practical and visual effects, it all comes together to give this film an old-school campy vibe of a bygone era -best supported through Joseph Bishara sharp and clinging score - yet never to the point of becoming predictable in its plot, because while yes, the film does establish an interesting mystery, you will definitely not see where its going. Malignant is well aware that this is not your first horror movie, characters will walk around in dark empty rooms knowing exactly when and where you expect the scare to come from, and it subverts you just enough times -but not everytime-to create genuine tension. After all a film that features a character entering an abandoned psychiatric hospital in the middle of the night *alone* is certainly going to be a set-up that comes with expectations.

There’s not much else to say without giving away too much of Malignant, it’s a film that’s better to go into with as little information as possible, all you need to know is that across the board the film just works. The performances, the visuals, the music, the themes. It’s a smart, well-crafted work of Horror and it’s the best Wan has given so far, which encouraging to believe he’s still not done and will hopefully offer even better work in the future.

-Danny

Shang-Chi: Legend of the Ten Rings - Cheap Thoughts

 At this point, everyone is familiar with the same Marvel formula, whether it’s tiring or not varies by your own milage, but it lead to one simple result, for the longest of times Marvel seemed unwilling to try anything new, to attempt to fix their problems at risk of them interfering with the working elements. Namely that every Marvel movie looks like a pavement and the hand-to-hand fight scenes are as energetic as static cling. Shang-Chi has shown that it is possible to avoid that, while still following a traditional Marvel formula (again, for better or worse).

Shang-Chi is a visually vibrant film, the colour grading has depth to make the environments pop, the camera lingers on the fights, the sound design gives the hits impact. It might be the first non-super powered fight scene to have some life into it and convince the audience we are actually seeing two characters fight each other and not just stunt-doubles dance violently towards each other. Not that this should be surprising, the co-ordination of DoP Bill Pope and Stunt Co-Ordinator Brad Allan having worked together multiple times, they know how to make each other shine. The use of the environments as well to add dimension and creativity, a trait that any fan of martial arts films would be able to point out the importance too right away has finally been implemented, none of these fights scenes would work the same if they were in a different location.

Beyond the technical side of things the film has a character driven story that pushes the momentum of the narrative…for the most part. Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) and Xu Xialing (Meng'er Zhang) are the children of the immortal Xu Wenwu (Tony Leung), a former conqueror of nations turned family man suffering from grief is easily one of the most compelling ensembles to grace a Marvel film. Particularly that of Tony Leung, which is not surprising as the man is a legend who at this point can play any role and make it award worthy. This is not the first time Marvel have tried to portray a sympathetic villain, but it’s the first one they’ve committed to. In most other occasions – take The Vulture for example – they give them clearly defined motivations that make them identifiable, but in order to prevent the audience from sympathising to much they just have them randomly murder people in a lazy attempt to make it clear they’re the bad guy. There is no trickery with Xu Wenwu, the audience is introduced to him as a one-man army who takes what he wants with no concern for the lives of others, and then as the film goes on shows the human sides to him to make us care. The dynamic between him and his children makes for genuinely compelling drama, a man who clearly loves his children but is so narrow-minded and absent that he’s unable to see the error of his ways, and though his kids do love him, they’re not willing to put their own happiness above the safety of others.

This is when Shang-Chi is at it’s best, its compelling character drama of a broken family, with flourishment of beautifully produced hand-to-hand fight scenes for style. Unfortunately it is still a Marvel film and it has to be broken down with generic CGI Monsters showing up and have to be fought off despite no emotional resonance to be made against grey slimy bats. This as you can imagine doesn’t take up a majority of the film, but it certainly takes away when the film loses focus on what’s important for the sake of powerful looking but empty monsters (Huh, kind of like Wenwu, ironic).

-Danny