What is the Malignant(2021) Plot?

Opening Image:

A large towering residence over by a lake surrounded by a forrest. A Doctor sits at her large wood desk recording herself via a VHS tape discussing a patient. A breakout happens within the hospital and orderlies are being ripped apart and bloodied left and right. Finally the main female doctor from the VHS shoots a sedative gun at the patient off camera. A camera shot shows a child's ankles wearing panda socks dragging over the floor. The patient is drug behind a heavy plastic curtain. The doctor yells "Gabriel You've been a bad boy". The radio nearby has a deep and haunting voice that eeks through the radio static stating "I Will kill you". A dramatic close up of the doctors face before she says "It's time to cut out the cancer." before the credit scenes occur. The credit scenes are jittery and jumpy with a heavily digitized rock theme music. The images are akin to disturbing close up images of skin being cut and limbs being removed.

Theme:

harder to define in this film. I wish it was about self identity, but they often try to frame it as a sense of what is family. I feel this is a weak presentation of this film.

Set-Up:

A fashcard of "Present day" fades uup on screen. An old carrolla rolls into a driveway. A pregnant woman in scrubs comes inside a quiet and spacious old victorian home in suburban neighborhood near Seattle. Her husband is in the bedroom watching RFC. Her husband says she works too much and should stick up for herself at work. She tries to respond in conversation, but he's too engrossed with whats on TV and doesn't also look up from his phone. She turns off the TV to get his attention. He becomes angry and starts poking her about her current pregnancy, that this is baby attempt #4 and he's tired of seeing his children die inside of her. She begs him to stop and instead it flares his obviously abusive nature. He punches her full force in her pregnant stomach hurtling her against the drywall behind her leaving a huge mark where the back of her skull hit. She reaches back and when her hand comes back from her hair it's soaked in blood. Abusive husband then immediately apologizes and leaves the bedroom to go get ice. The main character Maddison then fearfully locks herself in her bedroom to keep him out and even goes to sleep locked in this room.

Catalyst:

Cut to night. Absuive husband is on the couch, and hears a clinking in the kitchen. He goes to look, and the blender turns on. He turns it off. The fridge door opens, he shuts it. He circled back to TV room where static plays. A silloughet of a figure is on the couch. He turns on the light and figure dissapears, but a deppression in the couch cusions rise like something invisible just stood up. The figure is standing behind him and smashes his head against the wall. Maddison wakes up in the bedroom, blood on her pillow case. She hears a thump downstairs and goes to investigate it. She calls for absuive husband ("Derek") but he doesn't resond. She finds him at the bottom of the stairs with his head twisted all the way around facing backwards. She screams and goes to run out the from door, but a force shuts it ahead of her. She runs upstairs into the baby nursery. The shadow creature pushes against her, but then she looses when the creature blasts the door off it's hinges blowing pregnant Maddison to the ground.

The police arrive the next morning and observe while there are no finger prints the way the bruising is on the body is like the hands are backwards like the perpetrator was hanging from the ceiling. (Scene complete with dorky girl coronoer sucking on a red lolipop and acting awkward around the attractive case detective.)

Debate:

What is the figure? Why has she come to her home? Why was the creature backwards? Who is it, and what does it have to do with the opening scene of the asylum in the 1990s?

Break Into Act II:

Maddison wakes up in Bed. Her sister is near her and gives her the bad news that Maddison lost the baby. Maddison evidently cannot remember what happened the night before and her sister coaches her to tell her someone broke into Maddisons home, killed her husband and knocked her out. Detective Kokoa Shaw (attractive detective.) comes into Maddisons hospital room some time later to ask her questions about the night before. Maddison is catatonic from news of her baby's death and doesn't respond to the detectives queries. Sister explains to the detectives that even she didn't know Maddison had multiple miscarriages

Fun and Games:

Two weeks later title card fades up as Maddisons sister drives her home to her victorian home. Sister tells her she doesn't need to go back into that house alone. Maddison reassures her she's fine and goes in herself. Some hours later she exits her shower and it's now nighttime. A streetlight outside her bedroom window begins to flicker and go out. Maddison goes to look out her window. A shadow like figure is in the unlit street. Maddison see's the figure and runs to lock all her doors and cover all her windows. She almost suceeds until she see's her back door is open with the wind coming through. Sounds of house appear to be amplified in her anxiety wondering who is in her home. She runs to her bedroom saying it's all in her head as she reaches back to see her head was bleeding again. A music montage of heavy techno music strikes up as Maddison goes through her house changing all her door locks.

Maddison is then staring at the wall where her husband last slammed her head into. A shadow of herself is cast against the wall. Her sister climbs up her house because she changed all the locks. Maddison confides in her sister that she was seriously considering leaving her husband, but then found out she was pregnant again. Maddison expresses that she pines for a biological blood connection. Maddison reveals to her sister that she is actually adopted and was told that Maddisons birth mother died during birth. The thing is that Maddison cannot remember anything about her life before the age of eight.

B Story:

Heavy techno music transitions over to a tour guide of the undercity tunnels in Seattle. The Female guide tells stories of how the ghosts stil haunt the tunnels. And the lights flicker. The group of tourists thank her for her time as they leave. The Tour Guide is closing up turning out lights, as dark area's begin to make small thumping sounds that echo. Banging sounds begin to get louder like heavy footfall running toward her in the dark. However she turns on the floodlights before the sound of the footsteps can get her. Turns out the creature is hanging from the ceiling above her and grabs the tour guide as the screen cuts to black with a scream. The tour guide walkes up strapped to a vaulted wood beam. The room looks like an attic of some kind that has a large industrial fan spinning.

There's another person rummaning around in the attic junk. This is the creature in a long black coat and wild long hair over thier face. A nearby radio turns on. A voice through the static says to the tied up woman "I cannot tell you how long i've waited for this."

Midpoint:

Dr. Weaver is in her home. The camera pans over a large metal award for achievements in surgery. She receives a phone call. The call is the creatures voice and it tells Dr. Weaver "It's time to cut out the cancer." Dr. weaver asks "Who is this?"

Madison is cleaning up her house and walking down her staircast with a basket of laundry while listening to music on the radio. A young boy runs across the hallway at the base of her stairs. Maddison doesn't appear to notice. Lights flicker and radio reception fluctuates for a moment. She feels a pain at the back of her head and reaches back to touch it under her hair. Her hand returns blood on her hands. She opens her washer door to begin loading laundry. (I kid you not. She has a cranial injury that bleeds randomly and continues to do laundry.)

As Maddison bends down to load more shirts, she sees the face of Dr.Weaver scream looking at her through the porthole of her washer frontloading door. Maddison taken aback falters and trips. She feels herself torturedly change, convulsing and feeling her joints pop painfully. When Maddison looks up again her home around her melts away, and she is within the room where the doctor is being confronted by the long black coat creature with long wild hair. The doctor looks into the creatures face and says "Its not possible". The doctor is then bludgeoned to death her kitchen with her surgery trophy we saw earlier. Maddison screams awake in her home in the middle of the night. Blood on her pillow.

Bad Guys Close In:

Detectives inspect the doctors death. The forensic expert girl who behaves like an 11 year old girl hoping for someone to notice her. Back in the creatures lair-attic, a montage breaks out of the long black coat creature forging, sharpening, and hammering an elaborate knife made out of the trophy.

Maddison is over her toilet throwing up while her sister comforts her. She tells her sister she saw the doctors death. That she saw "him" standing over the doctor. The same "him" that broke into her home when her husband died.

Back at the precint, the detective is studying a picture of a 12 year old girl patient named "emily" on the back of the photo. He found this picture while investigating Dr.Weavers home after her death. The Detective asks the precinct face sketcher to age the little girl's photo by 30 years.

Cut to a scene of an older gentleman in his apartment on a phone call with a collegue talking about Dr.Weavers recent death. His phone glitches out and goes dead. He turns around and see's his window open with the rain pouring in. Wet footprints lead to the walk-in closet. The man goes to the closet and looks behind the door. No one. He cleans up the puddle forming around his open window. We see an image of the dark long coat figure standing on the other side of the man's room. He goes to seat himself in bed.

We cut back to Maddison in her home. Maddison is rolling around in a fretful dream in her bed. It's storming a lot outside. She awakes. Her room melts around her again and she is lying right next to the man we saw on the phone talking about Dr.Weavers death. The dark creature climbes over her ontop of the man and begins to violently stabl him. The dark creature in the coat turns to face Maddison and we get a look at an ugly disfigured and bloody face with no nose and slanted eyes like a cats.

Maddison awakes in her bed screaming again. Her sister comes running into her room to comfort her. (Her sister who doesn't normally live here, but was there for this exact moment.) Maddisons head is bleeding again.

Maddison goes to the police to let them know she's seeing visions of murders happening. The detective is needlessly skeptical, and the sister says "lets just go look to see if someone is dead and if she's wrong have her committed and put the cuffs on me." Detective goes where Maddison describes and walks in unnanounced and finds the man dead in his bed.

Maddison is back at the precinct describing the grotesque face she saw in her vision. After which, she goes into the ladies room and her phone rings with an unknown caller. The screen flickers and statics out (you know... like iphones do, unlike other classic tv systems where that glitch aestetic makes sense.) She picks up the phone. A static voice says

"Hello Emily."

"My name is Maddison."

"Your fake mother gave you that name, but you'll always be Emily to me. You know who I am even if they say I'm only in your head. They told you I wasn't real and you believed them. And I'm going to make them pay one by one."

"Gabriel." Maddison says outloud into the phone.

"See? Deep down you've always known. We're just getting started."

Maddison is then driving aggressively with her sister in the car explaining that "Gabriel" is the dark figure who killed her husband, and is the person in all her visions kiling other people. Her sister asks where are they going? Maddison drives them to thier mothers home. Maddison admits that she cannot remember anything about her life from before she was eight.

Sitting down at a table with their mother Maddison asks her mom if when she was adopted as a child if she had a twin brother named Gabriel. Without a word we cut to mom popping in a VHS tape of one of Maddisons early birthdays. It's a birthday party with no friends because everyone at school thought Maddison was a freak. Before blowing out candles she talks to a blank space near her and called them "Gabriel". Mother fast forwards the VHS to another point in the tap exactly 2 years later when Maddison is talking into a toy phone by a christmas tree. She was beggins Gabriel not to hurt the baby (mom was pregnant at this time.).

Mom then pauses the VHS to talk to adult Maddison and her sister. She explains that she thought Gabriel was a make-believe friend that Maddison invented in order to deal with whatever trauma she had before joining her family.

The detective back at the office finds a host of USB's with the previous VHS films of Dr.Weaver digitized. In Dr. Weavers video she mentions her name, the name of the second guy killed, and a third doctor she's collaborating with. The Detective looks up the address of the third doc to go find him.

The Detective arrives at the scene finding the third doctor dead in his tub. The dark creature with wild long hair and a black trenchcoat is perched up in the corner of the bathroom and attacks the detective. A chanse ensues and the figure gets away. Detectives goes back to the office and the sketch artist was like Maddison is the little girl in Dr.Weavers patient picture labeled "Emily" (Duh we know.)

All is Lost:

The detective goes to Maddisons home offering to put her under Hypnosis to unlock her memories before she was 8 years old.

She describes Gabriel following her home from the asylum hospital after seeing Dr. Weaver. Maddison describes that Gabriel would try to get her in trouble all the time, but parents blame her. There's one memory in particular where the voice of Gabriel tells child-Maddison to get a cut of cake from the kitchen. She doesn't cut the cake and her view melts and shifts away to reveal she's standing over her sleeping mothers pregnant belly with a knife. When Maddison is brought out from her trance she says she now remembers Gabriel. They state the killer is her imaginary friend.

The scene cuts to the kidnapped tour guide lady strapped to a beam in an attic. She actually gets herself free of the bonds and starts to walk away. She falls through the floor and right into the living room of Maddison. Maddison is immediately arrested. Maddison attic includes the stabby-stabby trophy, and the long black trench coat.

Dark Night Of the Soul:

Maddison is in the police precinct in a holding room being questioned by the detective. Maddisons eye's glaze over as the lights in the room blow out and the detectives cell rings with an unknown number. "He wants to talk to you." Maddison says. He answers his phone on speaker.

"Who are you Gabriel?"

" I'm a figment of her imagination."

Break into Act III:

Back at moms house. Sister and Mom are digging through old boxes of paperwork to find any trail of Maddisons childhood origins. Sister drives out to the now abandoned asylum hospital by the lake on a cliff.

cut to Maddison being placed in a holding cell with 20 other women.

Back at the hospital the sister finds Maddisons file and bring it home to mom. They watch the doctors VHS journal. First of the mom who was coming to the asylum to give up her child. Adoptive mom watching was mad because the adoption agency told her Maddisons mother dies in childbirth. Audience is now shown that "birthmom" to Maddison is the woman who fell out of her attic that was kidnapped.

More asylum tapes. Child Maddison in hospice in 1992, she is under heavy sedation and being spoken to by Dr.Weaver. They explain that Gabriel tends to make Maddison hyper strong unnaturally. The Camera man walks around from the from of little girl Maddison to reveal a hideous creature protruding from the back of her head with a malformed small body of rib cages and stubby underdeveloped arms. This is Gabriel.

Finale:

Maddison is continued to be harrased in the holding cell by the other tough ladies. It escalates into battery.

cut to sister and mom still watching doctor VHS journals. The doctor explains that they cut the body parts of Gabriel out, they couldn't separate Maddisons brain from Gabriels, so they surgically placed him inside the back of her skull and sealed her up. The doctor explains that Maddison is still having trouble as Gabriel will take over her mind to make her think she's elsewhere while he does his bidding with her body.

cut back to the holding cell. Maddison screams and starts ripping the back of her scalp open, her fractured skull then has a face protrude from it. Gabriel's alien-like face Maddison described before from her visions (But lets be honest, when in Maddisons life would she ever logically have seen Gabriels face to describe it to the sketch artist?)

The women in the holding cell scream. Gabriel pops all of Maddisons joints backwark to face his "front" and continues to bloody and beat up all women in the cell violently. Gabriel escapes and grabs his coat and trophy knife. Gabriel goes to the hospital where birthmom is recovering. Maddisons sister comes to the hospital room to plead for Maddison to fight her way out of her mind prison from Gabriel. A fake out scene happens where Gabriel feels victorious in killing everyone, But his surroundings shift and melt away. Maddison tells him she's now in control locking him back into her mind.

Final Image:

Maddison makes up with her sister about finding her need of family and that it was always her sister that she treasures. The camera pans away with Birthmom smiling at the scene of the two girls hugging.

Greivances

(I think in the script it would have made more sense. but frankly the bad guy in a trenchcoat and long wild hair never struck me as "male" in frame or hair.)

the little screaming boy at the bottom of the stairs makes no appearance before or after that moment. It is a total throw-away jump scare.

The picture of "emily" as a child basically looks exactly like Maddison, like it's not even a question or surprise twist when we see the image. The little girls haircut and color is exactly the same.

What police precinct looks like an anthropologie store?  

When the second victim was soaking up the rain puddle around his open window, never bothing to close it because... reasons... because the writer needed the window to be conveniently open later in the scene.

Too many lines that were hopeless in drama.

Strateigically placed hospital grafitti for the one wall and then isn't anywhere else.

is it normal for an investigated killer who is very likely a danger to others be placed in a holding cell?