Tag: James Wan

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Malignant

Annabelle Wallis stars as Madison Lake, whose visions of shocking murders become her reality.

What is the appeal of a movie like Sharknado? It’s bad, everyone involved knows it’s bad, and the audience knows it’s bad. Nevertheless, the original 2013 Sharknado was one of the biggest hits in Syfy network history and spawned five sequels.

The cultural theorist in the corner pipes up to say, “It’s camp!” And that’s true enough. But I think it’s simpler than that. The title tells you what you’re going to get — a tornado full of sharks — but it also tells you that this movie doesn’t give a fuck. It’s not trash that’s going to pretend to not be trash. It rejects your notions of “intelligence” and “decency” in favor of the sheer, undeniable pleasure, represented by a tornado full of sharks eating people who thought they were safe on dry land.

Which brings me to Malignant. It’s a film that lacks a solid, Sharknado-style hook, but it does have director James Wan, the co-creator of torture-porn progenitor Saw and the guy who made the warmed-over Exorcist vibes of The Conjuring into a billion-dollar franchise. Kudos to him for trying something fresh, but what, exactly, is the hook for Malignant? Wan knows how this works; Saw is a trashy film about watching people saw their own limbs off. Turns out, looking for the hook is part of the hook! Checkmate, Sharknado!

Madison Lake (Annabelle Wallis) is a pregnant woman in an abusive relationship with her husband Derek (Jake Abel). She desperately wants to have a baby, but she’s had three miscarriages, for which Derek blames her. During one particularly terrible argument, Derek slams Madison’s head against the wall, and she locks herself in their bedroom. While he’s sleeping off his drunk on the couch, a killer appears and stabs him in the head. When Madison awakes, she sees her husband has gotten what he deserves and is then attacked by the mysterious, hirsute killer, who looks like Cousin Itt joined Ministry in the mid-’90s.

When Madison wakes in the ICU, her sister Sydney (Maddie Hasson) informs her that she has lost yet another baby. Enter the FBI (or the police or some other law enforcement body. Whatever. Malignant DGAF) in the persons of Shaw (George Young) and Moss (Michole Briana White). The investigative team has doubts about Madison’s explanation as to how her hubby got a chef’s knife in his cranium. Sydney sets out to prove Madison’s innocence.

I could go on about the plot, but it’s not going to help it make sense. There’s a mystery surrounded by red herrings — but is it really a red herring if the writer has no idea what’s supposed to be happening? Malignant seems like it’s pasted together from leftover scenes and gags cut from better movies. Sydney seems to be a refugee from a sitcom. Madison lives in a creepy old Victorian house in Seattle that really should be haunted but isn’t.

And yet, I kinda liked it because it doesn’t give a fuck. Sharknado rules are in effect. Wan knows what he’s trying to do — create some gonzo horror scenes — and he does it. When you stop rolling your eyes, the stuff on screen looks pretty badass. There’s something to be said for a movie that knows what it wants to be, and fully becomes itself — even if its true form is pretty stupid.

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The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It

David (Julian Hilliard) wrestles with a demonic waterbed in The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It.

Ed and Lorraine Warren were a pair of good, old fashioned American hucksters who teamed up as investigators of the paranormal. He was a self-taught demonologist, and she a medium. They ran a museum devoted to occult and paranormal artifacts out of their home in Monroe, Connecticut, which began with a creepy doll named Annabelle, which was allegedly possessed. They made a name for themselves investigating the New York haunted house case that inspired the 1979 frightener The Amityville Horror. 

The ’70s provided the perfect environment for the Warrens’ brand of Roman Catholic-flavored scary stories, thanks to the huge popularity of The Exorcist. One could argue that it was William Friedkin’s 1973 film, not Jaws, that heralded the beginning of the modern blockbuster era. Friedkin’s technique is unstoppable. The arresting combination of the innocent-looking Regan, played by Academy Award nominee Linda Blair, and the deep voice of the foul-mouthed demon who possesses her, is just one example of the tricks that have been endlessly lifted from The Exorcist. But it’s the story’s mining of the deep history of Christian paranoia about demons and witchcraft that helped it resonate so deeply with audiences. 

The Warrens rode the wave of Exorcist-inspired interest in possessions and hauntings to investigate more than 10,000 cases over their career. They achieved another level of fame in 2013 when director James Wan adapted the story of one of their more lurid early investigations into The Conjuring. Wan, who these days is working on his Aquaman sequel, served up watered-down Friedkin to spectacular results. The Conjuring turned into a seven-film, $2 billion franchise for Warner Bros. 

Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson as freelance demonologists Lorraine and Ed Warren.

The Devil Made Me Do It, the eighth film in the series, is helmed by Michael Chaves, who directed the sixth installment, The Curse of Llorona. The story cold opens with Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) attending to young David Glatzel (Julian Hilliard), who shows all the Friedkin-inspired signs of possession: a foul mouth, horrible contortionist moves, and the classic blood shower. When the young priest arrives and things get heated, the demon causes Ed to have a heart attack. As he’s fading from consciousness, he sees David’s brother Arne (Ruairi O’Connor) implore the demon to “take me instead!” Protip: Don’t say that to a demon, unless you’re willing to take on a new, very messy tenant in your head. 

David is saved, but Arne starts getting mysterious spirited visitors. Then, when partying with his girlfriend Debbie (Sarah Catherine Hook) and his creepy landlord Bruno (Ronnie Gene Blevins), David blacks out and stabs Bruno 22 times. The Warrens insist that David is innocent by reason of demonic possession, an unorthodox defense anywhere outside of the Salem Witch trials, and set out to discover why these pesky demons are making this wholesome white family do bad things. 

The Devil Made Me Do It resembles nothing more than an overly long, particularly lame episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. After finding a “witch’s totem” in the crawlspace of the Glatzel home, they consult a former priest named Kastner (John Noble) who went a little crazy investigating the pseudo-satanic Ram cult. Then, there’s lots of standing before Ed’s conspiracy theorist yarn wall looking for connections that can only loosely be called “clues,” before settling onto a hypothesis that involves, you guessed it, a witch. 

Like all the Conjuring movies, this one is allegedly based on a true story from the Warrens’ archives. But what does “true” really mean with unreliable narrators like these? The Warrens’ brand of demon mumbo-jumbo plays into the need for people to have someone else to blame for the evil that men do. It’s not harmless: In the ’80s, the Satanic Panic ruined thousands of people’s lives searching for child-abusing devil cults that didn’t exist. You can see the echoes of it in the pseudo-religious overtones of the Q conspiracists, who paint their political opponents with accusations of devil-worshipping pedophilia. But there’s no need to resort to demonic possession to explain heart attacks, child sexual abuse, or a drunk guy murdering his landlord who he thought he was coming onto his girlfriend. 

Yes, the Warrens made it up, but so what? Made-up stuff makes for good movies, and truth be told, I would be down with all of it if The Devil Made Me Do It wasn’t such a frightful bore. Wilson and Farmiga are phoning it in at this point, and, with the exception of Hilliard, who conjures a few sparks as the young possession victim, they’re the best actors on the screen. The visuals are lazy Exorcist retreads, and why does it seem to be so hard for big budget movies to get a decent sound mix these day? The Devil Made Me Do It is dreadful, but not in a good way. 

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It is now playing at multiple locations, and streaming on HBO Max.

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Film Features Film/TV

Mortal Kombat: Flawless Victory, or Fatality?

Goro attacks Cole Young (Lewis Tan) in Mortal Kombat.

Since the dawn of film, there has been one consistent truth: Hollywood will make a movie out of any old thing. Producers have shown few qualms about adapting material from any almost medium, as long as it provides a way to hook an existing audience into buying a ticket on opening weekend. Some of the form’s biggest hits came about this way: Gone With the Wind was an adaptation of a popular novel. Casablanca was a stage play. Mars Attacks was inspired by a series of Topps bubble gum cards. Then, of course, there are comic books. Were you aware they sometimes make movies that aren’t about comic books? 

I maintain you can make a good movie about anything. Disney even got two good movies out of their Pirates of the Caribbean theme park ride. But for some reason, it’s been historically hard to make a good movie out of a video game. There’s the horror of Super Mario Bros; the Street Fighter adaptation, which is only notable because it was Raul Julia’s final film; Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever is the worst-reviewed film on Rotten Tomatoes. And I swear I will gnaw off my own leg before I sit through another Angry Birds movie. 

Maybe it’s the game part that’s the problem. I’m looking at you, Hasbro, for your ill-fated attempts to monetize your intellectual property with Battleship. (But then again, Clue is a campy gem.) You’d think the raw materials are there to make a good movie. But even games with elaborate backstories like Prince of Persia have completely fallen apart as films. 

Which brings us to Mortal Kombat. It offers Hollywood the best of both worlds: a video game adaptation AND a remake! The 30-year-old fighting game franchise actually began life as an abortive attempt to create a video game tie-in for the Jean Claude Van Damme film Universal Soldier, and had its first jump to the big screen in 1995. The director for this attempted port is James Wan, the Australian horror director who co-created Saw and The Conjuring, and who had massive hits with Aquaman and Furious 7.  So maybe, just maybe, Mortal Kombat could break the curse of the video game movie. 

Well, it’s better than Angry Birds, I’ll give it that much. I’d even go so far as “surprisingly watchable in places.” Mortal Kombat, it turns out, has an incredibly dense backstory, developed over 11 major installments, that boils down to a long-standing conflict between our universe, Earthrealm, and an alternate dimension called Outland, described as “the most brutal and murderous realm,” which is populated entirely by butt-kicking evildoers and their wretched slaves. (In the finest, low-budget sci fi tradition of Doctor Who and Star Trek, the Outland scenes are filmed in a quarry.) Certain supremely bad ass mortals carry the mark of the dragon (which is, coincidentally, Mortal Kombat’s logo), and are chosen to fight in a tournament to determine inter-dimensional bragging rights, and also possible enslavement of the losing reality. 

Joe Taslim as Sub-Zero

There’s always a Chosen One, but Mortal Kombat takes the title of the most Chosen Ones. Originally, there were seven playable characters and three bosses. Ten major characters is a lot for any film that isn’t a historical epic. But since 1993, there have been dozens more fighters introduced for players to pit against each other. After a fairly smoothly executed cold opening, in which retired ninja Hanzo Hasashi (Hiroyuki Sanda) is assassinated by ice demon Bi-Han (Joe Taslim), aka Sub-Zero, Mortal Kombat settles into a rhythm of a character introduction, followed by individual fights, then new character introductions to challenge the survivors. Ostensible leading man Lewis Tan is a robotic cipher as Cole Young, the journeyman cage fighter who is actually the descendant of Hanzo Hasashi. But there are occasional flashes of life in the sprawling cast, such as Josh Lawson’s winking turn as the treacherous mercenary Kano. I always liked to play as Raiden (Tadanobu Asano), because it’s just immensely satisfying to kill your opponents with lightning.

Raiden (Tadanobu Asano) says “Come get some of this here lightning.”

And that is why video game adaptations are doomed to fall flat. It’s fun for me to kill with lightning. To watch a character on the screen who is not under my control command lightning, or rip out a dragonman’s heart, or fire his eye laser, is less satisfying. The narrative of video games like Mortal Kombat and Angry Birds doesn’t really matter, as long as the gameplay mechanics are fun. But to a film, it’s everything. So it’s useless to try to stick to the game script by having Kano shout “Kano Wins!”, because you’re just not going to get that same adrenaline rush unless you’re pulling Kano’s strings. Also, I don’t say this about many films, but this one really needed a narrator like the video game. It’s not Kano’s place to shout “Kano Wins!” That’s up to the unseen, presumably supernatural, judges. As for the film, this judge is declaring a “FATALITY.”