Malevolent (2018)
Movie rating: 5/10
It’s unfortunate to see a good premise wasted. Based on the novel Hush by Eva Konstantopoulos, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ben Ketai, and directed by Olaf de Fleur, Malevolent has a great concept for a movie about ghosts and the paranormal. Set in 1986 Scotland, the film follows American siblings Angela Sayers (Florence Pugh) and her brother Jackson (Ben Lloyd-Hughes) who along with technicians Elliot (Scott Chambers) and Beth (Georgina Bevan) are scam artists who fake paranormal encounters. Drawing on the reputation of their mother, who went insane from seeing people who weren’t there, Angela poses as someone who can contact ghosts. But when the team takes a job at an orphanage where foster children were found dead with their mouths sewn shut 15 years ago, they start to lose their grip on reality.
Anything involving the supernatural is utterly opposed to a scientific, materialist worldview. With apologies to amateur ghost hunters, the scientific consensus is in: ghosts do not exist. The same goes for all other supernatural phenomena. That’s why some of the most effective horror movies deliberately sow doubt and confusion about what we consider real. My favourite example is the original Exorcist. As I mentioned in my review of the abominable Exorcist II: “The Exorcist brilliantly went through every natural, scientific explanation for Regan’s behaviour until only a supernatural explanation remained. Even so, the viewer is never totally sure if Regan was actually possessed by a demon or suffering from some extreme form of mental illness.”
Malevolent has the potential to do for ghosts what The Exorcist did for demonic possession. Our lead characters are fraudsters that take advantage of people who believe ghosts are real. Putting these scam artists and skeptics in a situation where they come to believe ghosts are real has the potential to deconstruct the very nature of supernatural horror, questioning why human beings often still fear phenomena like ghosts for which there is no scientific evidence whatsoever.
Spoilers follow.
Sadly, the film largely fails to explore those questions and becomes for the most part just another haunted house movie, with some torture porn thrown in for 21st century audiences. There’s a tantalizing question at first about whether or not Angela can see ghosts. But by the halfway point it becomes clear that yes, she can see ghosts. For a while I thought maybe the girls who appear in old-fashioned dresses with their mouths sewn shut are alive and have somehow been surviving in the house. After all, if the movie takes place in 1986, the girls’ clothing could have been current enough in 1971. But they are ghosts, because we see them disappear.
Near the end, after Jackson has suffered numerous injuries and had his tongue cut out, jaw broken, and mouth sewn shut, we see him walking along the road with no injuries speaking normally to Angela, because he’s a ghost. No doubt, no ambiguity.
Malevolent is a perfectly watchable horror movie. Pugh is always great, though I still don’t think I’ve seen her in a role where she speaks in her native English accent. Lloyd-Hughes does a good job playing a character who, as he tells his sister, loves her even if he can be a “dick” sometimes. There are some effective jump scares and moments of slowly building dread. But certain plot elements weren’t fleshed out enough. Jackson pressures Angela to take the job at the orphanage even though she wants out because he’s in debt to some loan sharks. It would have been nice to know more details beyond that basic fact.
Mrs. Greene (Celia Imrie), the owner of the foster home who hires the team to help her stop the girls’ “screaming”, turns out to be the real antagonist. Her son Herman (Niall Greig Fulton) was blamed for the girls’ murder, but in fact Mrs. Greene was involved in the murders herself. Herman, we discover, is alive and well, and obediently following out his mother’s orders to torture and kill Angela, Jackson, Elliot, and Beth. I guess we’re to believe that mother and son sewed the girls’ mouths shut because they were sick of their screaming when they were alive. Angela kills Mrs. Greene by telling the girls to scream, which angers and distracts Greene long enough for Angela to stab her through the neck. But why did Mrs. Greene hire Angela’s team in the first place? It seems she always knew them to be scammers. But why does she want to kill them and/or sew their mouths shut?
The final scenes after Mrs. Greene’s death are underwhelming. When the credits rolled I got the sense of “Oh yeah, the movie’s done.” It’s a reminder why most horror movies end with what author John Kenneth Muir in his analysis of the slasher genre called “the sting in the tail/tale”:
In the horror genre, the sting in the tail/tale is designed to forge a final, spiky crescendo, one that audiences will remember as they file out of the auditorium. Sometimes the sting in the tail/tale causes a laugh, sometimes a shriek. The sting in the tail/tale comes in many shapes and sizes. Often it ratchets up the terror and changes the very nature of the narrative, even setting up the grounds for a sequel.
Of course not every horror movie has to end that way. Still, in the case of Malevolent, I think ending on a more exciting note might have improved my overall impressions.
Malevolent is enjoyable enough if you’re a horror fan, but largely forgettable. I’d say check it out if you like horror and Florence Pugh, have a Netflix account and 90 minutes to kill. The film doesn’t outstay its welcome. But if you’re looking for a truly great horror film starring Pugh, watch Midsommar instead.