Most of the time, scary movies are far off my radar. I may know some of the movie titles as I browse through the theater listings but I rarely know more than that. This time, however, there was a lot of buzz surrounding Malignant. And I only heard good things. So, for once, I was looking forward to a horror movie. Let’s see if it lived up to the hype.

Madison (Annabelle Wallis) has a difficult life. She has had multiple miscarriages and her husband is rather abusive. When she, once again, loses a pregnancy at the same time her husband is murdered, her life turns upside down. She begins having visions of other murders in town. It’s up to her sister, Sydney (Maddie Hasson), to dig into Madison’s mysterious childhood to find out what is going on.

My least favorite type of Halloween movie is a gory slasher flick. Thankfully, this doesn’t have a lot of gore in it. There are a lot of stabbing/slashing types of murders but it’s nothing too over the top. In my opinion, it’s the perfect amount of scary murdery stuff without organs spilling out all over the place.

However, my favorite part of Malignant is the cinematography. There are some absolutely gorgeous shots paired with interesting camera angles. Sometimes we’ll see an entire scene take place from the ceiling, as if we were crawling above the characters. Sometimes we’ll get a strange angle that makes us question whether what we are seeing is real or fantasy. That is what kept me intrigued.

The plot has been done before. It’s nothing particularly new. I was able to pretty accurately guess the “twist” before it came up. It’s actually the amazing talents of Marina Mazepa, a contortionist who brings the villain to life, that makes the movie special. If it wasn’t for her, there is no way the movie would have been as interesting.

Do I think you should watch Malignant? I think it’s worth watching. Especially if you enjoy the filmmaking aspect of a movie. But if you are looking for good cop-work, skip it. These cops are nothing more than stereotypes. Come for the visuals, stay for the…visuals.