It’s been five years since Malignant director James Wan has helmed a horror film with 2016’s The Conjuring 2. Following that, Wan immediately began working on the blockbuster superhero film Aquaman, which was released in 2018. In the wake of Aquaman’s success, the filmmaker knew he wanted to return to horror, but he also wanted to come back with something new and original.
“I just wanted to go back and do another movie that was kind of in the spirit of what I used to make right when I started out my career,” Wan said over Zoom during a press screening event for the film this past weekend.
Watch the first clip from Malignant below:
Wan is grateful for the major opportunities he’s been given (he’s also made a Fast and the Furious movie!), but he never forgot about his smaller, more intimate films like Saw and The Conjuring. “In the midst of making Aquaman and two years making that film and a whole year doing post-production on it, all I wanted to do was just go back and do something unique – something … that harked back to the start of it – and it really was [Malignant],” he said. “It came from the desire to want to do that and then it became a case of finding a story that would fit that aspiration, if you will.”
Created by Wan, Ingrid Bisu, and Akela Cooper, Malignant tells the story of Madison (Annabelle Wallis), a woman who has shocking nightmares of grisly murders and soon learns that these horrific dreams actually happened. Madison links the murders to her past and to an entity named Gabriel. She must find him before more harm could be done to anyone else. Inspired by medical stories regarding teratoma and parasitic growths – hence the title Malignant – Bisu approached Wan with the concept for the story, which he found fascinating.
“It could make a really cool, messed up movie,” joked Wan. “It started from there and we started doing more research, and realized we could come up with a really unique villain that we haven't quite seen before, and the idea of Gabriel and [the] medicine [aspect] were born from that.”
Many have come to know Wan for his supernatural films in The Conjuring universe and his gore horror films like Saw, but he wants audiences to know that this film is nothing like what he’s done before. In what Wan calls “easily my most violent and most gory film,” Malignant will have fans questioning what they know and expect from Wan.
“People know me as the ghostly, supernatural guy in recent years,” says Wan. “Part of the reason why I made Malignant was to really break that expectation. ‘Oh, you think this is what you're getting from James Wan?’ No, you're getting this instead.”
Malignant stars Annabelle Wallis, Maddie Hasson, George Young, Michole Briana White, Jacqueline McKenzie, and Jake Abel. The film was produced by Wan and Michael Clear, with Eric McLeod, Judson Scott, Bisu, Peter Luo, Cheng Yang, Mandy Yu and Lei Han serving as executive producers.
Malignant arrives in theaters and on HBO Max on September 10.