This is going to be a tricky one to write about. Partly because a lot of the immediate impact comes from a plot twist that, if you pay close enough attention to what’s happening on-screen, is actually painfully obvious. But mostly, it’s because this is one of those special films like The Angry Birds Movie 2 where, at time of writing, I’m still trying to figure out whether this film is legitimately good or so-bad-it’s-good. As someone who has long since advocated for the latter as genuine entertainment, I’m not saying that as a detraction of the production itself. Just that trying to get things straight is quite the task, for something this unashamedly batshit.
But let’s start on as objective a foothold as one can with this kind of feature, and get into how good the production values are. Cinematographer Michael Burgess (whose work up to this point has stayed mainly within the Conjuring Universe) does some serious flexing with the camera work here, using long shots that make full use of the set design on offer and bring the most out of the Argento-as-fuck colour palette. Regular Wan collaborator Joseph Bishara brings some of his best work to date for the soundtrack as well, bringing a lot of Nine Inch Nails-esque textures to the feature with these wailing and glitchy soundscapes. He also provides an instrumental cover of Where Is My Mind? as a recurring leitmotif that… well, like I said above, those paying enough attention can guess what that’s leading up to.
However, for as good as this all looks and sounds (ditto for the actors attached; opening with Jacqueline McKenzie is a very easy way to immediately get me on-side with a movie these days), it’s all basically covering up how the film itself isn’t all that scary on its own. It’s a supernatural psycho-horror about a woman (played by Annabelle Wallis) who receives visions of a mysterious killer as he rips his way through his victims. The effects work for the visions are right in my psychological wheelhouse, and the gore effects are delightfully full-on (while not being gratuitous), but because of Wallis’ Madison and her passivity within the story, there’s not a lot of room for dread or tension to exist within the frame. As a result, it’s a horror film that isn’t that horrifying when taken in its entirety.
Now, don’t get me confused: Just because this isn’t scary doesn’t mean it’s bereft of entertainment value. What it lacks in chills, it more than makes up for in sheer buckwild, “watch how far I take this shit” energy. By the time it gets to that final reel, and the killer’s identity becomes fully known, it essentially turns into the mutated offspring of Stephen King’s The Dark Half and Leigh Whannell’s Upgrade. I’d make a joke about how the latter comparison invites certain other accusations of parasitic attachments between people, but that would detract from how, even with the influences being this obvious, the film itself is wholly of its own creation. Wan pulls the classic fanboy filmmaker gambit in that, while you can clearly tell where they got their tricks from, there’s enough of a unique artistic identity to make the mash-up viable. Except here, that comes about because it’s difficult to think of any mainstream filmmaker that would go this hard on a premise like this.
I mean, sure, there’s the occasional bits of deeper theme to be gotten out of it, mainly to do with trauma, parasitic relationships, and how the two tend to gravitate towards each other. It basically shares the same ‘problem’ as Before I Wake, in how it feels like a family drama wearing the skin of a horror film, with a lot of its biggest moments coming not from genre thrills but from revelations to do with the characters and their connection to each other. But even then, this is the kind of film where the literal specifics to do with medical monstrosities and something called the Simion Research Hospital (which initially gives the impression that we’re about to watch a remake of Monkey Shines) are so insane all on their own that there isn’t much of a need to dive deeper to find entertainment. This shit is glorious enough already.
At this point in James Wan’s career, sitting on a throne made from ticket receipts for the Conjuring and its many offshoots (along with directing billion-dollar features for two other major franchises), he so very easily could have just rested on his laurels. He could have phoned in just another retro-horror aesthetics exercise and called it a day. But instead, he delivered the single craziest film of his entire career, on the same wavelength as Dead Silence but with an added decade-or-so of acquired film craft to make the insane look amazing. This is not going to appeal to everyone, but seeing something this amazingly and unashamedly trashy existing in the mainstream, coming from arguably the most mainstream horror director working today, earns quite a bit of respect from me. If only more filmmakers took this much of a risk.
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