James Wan Offers Details on His New Film MALIGNANT and Says It's a "Horror Version of FROZEN"
The first trailer for director James Wan‘s new horror film Malignant was released yesterday, and it certainly was filled with some crazy and strange nightmarish scares! In a recent interview with IGN, Wan talks about his film, offers new details, and says it’s a “horror version of Frozen."
In the film, “Madison (Annabelle Wallis) is paralyzed by shocking visions of grisly murders, and her torment worsens as she discovers that these waking dreams are in fact terrifying realities.” She is faced with a malevolent figure named Gabriel, something that haunted her when she was a child, and she called it “the devil.”
When talking about Gabriel, Wan shares, “What I will say (about Gabriel) is I'm very aware of the reputation that I have built for myself in the horror genre in recent years. And I'm always trying to find new ways to reinvent myself so that I don't get stale, so to speak. Or rather, I don't want peoples' perception of me to get stale. I don't want people to keep thinking, ‘Oh, James is just doing the same thing again and again because he's able to do it. He does it well, and that's all he does.’ And I hate that. And so part of the reason, too, why I wanted to make Malignant was that I want people to know that this is not a jump scare film. And I worked very hard to make a movie that doesn't really have my traditional jump scares because it's not that kind of a movie. And I feel like I know that people now associate me with demonic possessions, and haunted houses, and stuff like that. And so with that in mind, I knew I wanted to play with peoples' perception of me.”
Well, I’m ready to watch whatever Wan has to throw at me! I really hope that he pulls off what he set out to accomplish with this new film. Even though he says he doesn’t want to incorporate jump scares in the film, it still looks terrifying. I love horror films that mess with your mind and get inside your head, and it seems like that’s what he looking to bring to this one.
Wan goes on to explain that the movie is a blend of several genres, “It's horror, but it's also a traditional thriller. It's psychological, it's serial killer, but it's also potentially a monster movie. My goal was to create a villain that you're not quite sure what it is. Is he a demon? Is he just a human serial killer or someone's figment of someone's imagination? Is he an imaginary friend that has come to life? It could be any of those things. And I think that's part of the fun with the film is trying to work out what the hell this thing is.”
The director talks about the story and explains how the film is a horror version of Frozen saying It’s “a sisterly investigative story. The story roughly is about what Madison's now experiencing. For some reason, she's having these visions of this series of really gruesome, grisly murders. And she doesn't know what's happening to her. She feels like somehow it's connected to her and all that. And her sister and her are trying to work it out. So they're trying to find out what is going on here. And I joke that it's like the horror version of Frozen. It really is. There's a horror version of Frozen in that there is some of that sisterly camaraderie, but with a lot of crazy shit that happens around them.”
He also shares that Malignant was inspired by the films of directors Dario Argento and Brian De Palma. He says it’s “a little bit of my homage to Argento's Opera and Terror at the Opera, and it really has shades of all those '80s and sometimes '70s of more violent and visceral thrillers.”
When explaining the opportunity he saw with Malignant, he is looking to defy people’s expectations of what they think they know about his horror filmmaking sensibilities, “How do I take (people’s assumption of his approach) and make you think that you may potentially be watching a possession, or a haunted house, or a demon movie, but then how do I untwist that? And that's what I'm always trying to do. Whether I'm successful or not, at least that's my goal. My goal is to try and stay one step ahead of the audience, stay one step ahead of myself if I can help it, and try and do something different. I do think Malignant is somewhat outside of what people know me for, if even within the horror genre. And I think that's going to be good and bad because there will be people coming in to watch this movie, going, ‘Fuck, were we expecting classic James Wan kind of scares and horror, and he's not giving that to us.’ Well, I'm kind of sick of it. I don't want to do that again. I've done it so many times already. And so I want to try something different. And I think whether I succeed or not, at least I don't want to keep repeating myself.”
I’m all for Wan trying new things and being unique! Wan went on to explain why he set out to make this movie, saying, “I just thought, ‘When am I ever going to get the chance to do a film like this ever again? Now is the time for me to use this opportunity to make the kind of movies that I don't think really get made at this level anymore.’ And so it really came from the want to just make a hark back, a throwback kind of film. And this was just a story that I came about that really fit that desire.”
The filmmaker also offered an explanation of the title, saying, “I'm a big fan of titles that have multiple meanings to it. And with Saw, we felt there's one part of that that obviously refers to the visceral aspect of a tool, but at the same time, it touched a bit on what the voyeuristic aspect of the film was as well. And so with Malignant, I just felt like this title really encompasses the tone of the film, the subject matter, which actually has a fair bit of medical horror attached to it. So it just felt appropriate.”
One other thing that Wan wanted to do with this film is his goal was to “try and create as much of (the effects) in-camera as I can, but whilst embracing today's modern technology and how best to combine the two. To me, the best of both worlds is taking old-school camera and practical effects and combining them with some modern approaches. And I think Malignant really falls in that camp.”
Well, I’m all in for Malignant! This looks like a great film, and I’m excited to see Wan try some new and different things with the horror genre that he’s never done before. Malignant opens in theaters on September 10th.