Few directors get to create even one successful movie franchise--but James Wan has so far managed three. Wan kickstarted the Saw series back in the early 2000s with Leigh Whannel, and a decade later the pair created the spooky Insidious movies. Wan's 2013 blockbuster The Conjuring gave him the biggest success of his career to that point and has since spawned an entire interconnected universe. Since then Wan has gone on to make blockbusters such as Fast 7 and Aquaman, but for many fans, horror remains the genre with which he is most closely associated.

Malignant is his first horror movie as a director since 2016's The Conjuring 2. Wan has never been shy about displaying his genre influences--from the Seven-style serial killer thrills of Saw to The Conjuring's mash-up of The Shining and The Exorcist--and Malignant is similarly overt in homages to past movies and sub-genres. The difference here is that Wan doesn't stop at just one or two similarly-themed influences. Malignant is a wild, unpredictable collision of multiple ideas, tones, styles, and story beats. It's a horror cocktail that doesn't always work but is sure to keep genre-savvy audiences happy; it's a horror movie made by fans for fans.

Annabelle Wallis plays Madison, a woman married to an abusive man named Derek; one night he is murdered in what seems to be a home invasion incident. This is just the start of Madison's problems--she starts experiencing strange visions, putting her at the scene of brutal killings elsewhere in the city, carried out by a monstrous hooded figure who can seemingly control electricity. Madison was adopted as a child and has no memory of her early years, yet all the victims seem to have a link to her past, leading her and her sister Sydney to start investigating the dark truth about her childhood.