[Editor’s note: The following containsspoilersforMalignant.]
If you have watchedMalignantand wondered howJames Wanmade his Giallo-inspired supernatural slasher, you’re in the right place. Shortly before the film was released, I caught a screening in Los Angeles with a few other reporters and immediately after the film ended, Wan talked to us from London about his fantastic film.
During the interview, Wan revealed where the idea came from (thank youIngrid Bisu), how he wanted to make a film that harkened back to his early days while incorporating everything he’s learned since then, how he brought Gabriel to life, howMarina Mazepalearned all the choreography so she could fight backwards, what ILM and Spectral Motion did on the film with the visual effects, why he callsMalignanta “genre blender,” how he designed the soundtrack and soundscape to help tell the story and represent Gabriel, and more.
Finally, while I know James Wan is currently working onAquaman 2and will be offered a lot of franchise films after that, I really hope he’s making more films likeMalignantsoon. I need more films with third acts like this one.
MalignantstarsAnnabelle Wallis,Maddie Hasson,Mckenna Grace,Jake Abel,George Young,Michole Briana White, andJacqueline McKenzie.Malignantis now playing in theaters and streaming on HBO Max.
Check out what Wan had to say below. This was an interview conducted with other reporters.
QUESTION: From inception to what we’re all seeing on screen, how did the story change along the way, and I’m also curious about the editing process. How did it possibly change in the editing room?
JAMES WAN: The inception of it was, Ingrid Bisu, my wife, came to me with this really crazy sort of a medical condition, right? This anomaly. I remember just going through it, she did a lot of medical research on it, and I was really taken by it; I was really fascinated by it. And from that, I looked at what, naturally as my horror movie mind, what I immediately was attracted to the possibility of a story or a film that could be pulled from this particular affliction. It just started from there. We went through different ideas and what kind of story it could become, and what kind of movie it could become. Then at some point it just started becoming more real. It became a full-blown story, and then at that moment I had to decide what kind of movie I wanted to make it. It just felt like… I’ve had the aspiration to go back to the early kind of films that I started my career with – likeSaw,Dead Silence,Death Sentencedays – where I was allowed to make these films that were a lot more gritty and more visceral, and I just felt naturally this particular concept and story really lend itself to that. And we went along with it. In terms of editing, the trickiest part was we shot a lot of stuff that was written in there, but in editing you start to question yourself, like, ‘Am I giving too much of the concept away? Am I kind of laying the breadcrumbs a bit too thick here that would destroy the reveal at the end, if you will?’ And so it was a fine line and, and the editing process was all done during the pandemic. We had to do it remotely. It was really difficult, but then we got into the groove of things. But ultimately it allowed me some distance away from the film and then to come back into and look at it and then reassess the film and kind of tweak some things.
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I want to ask about working with Marina Mazepa, because the physicality in this film is just unreal. I was hoping you can talk about working with her on set and just that physicality.
WAN: What I will say is designing and bringing Gabriel to life wasn’t an easy task. It really is a combination… it took the entire filmmaking village, as I describe it. It’s a combination between the performances from Annabelle Wallis, the subtleties from Annabelle Wallis – the more crazy part that she kind of had to go into, the darkness. So between her and the psychological aspect of herself kind of building up into Gabriel coming out, to someone to, when she’s fully possessed by Gabriel, Marina stepped into it. And yeah Marina was an incredible find. We could not believe it. I thought I had to shoot a lot of the movie in reverse and then play back in reverse. What was amazing about Marina is just how quick of a study she is as a sort of physical body performer/dancer, that she was able to learn the choreography, and she literally did all the fighting backwards blindly! It was insane to sort of watch how that was all choreographed. That huge fight in the holding cell was all done by Marina. There was no sort of trickery, if you will; we didn’t cheat in any way. She did that all backwards. So it was a combination of what she did there, and what prosthetic makeup did as well. We applied a prosthetic life cast of Annabelle’s face, and she will wear it on her actual face. Then on the back, she’ll be wearing an animatronic head of Gabriel. So a combination of that, with the amazing special effects team that I had on the film. Also ILM helping me to pull it all together to bring Gabriel to life, it was quite the experience. I really wanted to create a villain that we haven’t quite seen before, and it took a lot of work to get it to this level.
I wanted to build off what you just talked about with Gabriel in terms of working with the special effects team, was that Michael Elizalde’s team that you guys worked with to develop Gabriel?
WAN:: Everything Gabriel centric and animatronic wise was done at Spectral Motion with Mike’s team. I’ve done a little bit, I wouldn’t say little, I’ve done a fair bit of animatronic in the past on my past projects, but never to this degree. It was quite an eye-opening experience. I loved it. Obviously, like most of us of our generation, we grew up, you know, with horror films from the eighties and all of that.
I wanted to ask because of the animatronics, how much did that change your style in terms of working in camera and things like that? Did it change at all in terms of how you guys shot? You shot this with Michael or was it business as usual?
WAN: Both. Like most practical effects, you kind of need to hide the puppeteer, right? Like literally you need to hide the cables and stuff like that, but you know the great thing with having modern visual effects at our disposal compared to what they had in the eighties is I could paint people out. I can have people who would be really close by, can have cables sticking out and stuff like that, that doesn’t have to be in the final film. And so it made the process much better in that respect. I was fortunate enough to have ILM on the film as well, that could help me take the prosthetic effects to the next level. So just things like that. It was pretty cool to kind of bring with me just all the experiences that I’ve gained from making my bigger movies to this film that is really honestly made with the spirit of a more down and dirty approach.
What was the most important influence in kind of creating this character, creating the story? Cause I definitely felt like shades of Cronenberg and stuff like that. What was the most important inspiration for you?
WAN: Oh my goodness. I described the movie as not just as a genre bender, but a genre blender, right. It really is a blender of a whole bunch of stuff that has sort of influenced me over my years, growing up, loving these kinds of movies from science fiction to science fiction horror to psychological thrillers to monster movies. And the blender happens to be my head that that they’ll go in there and you know, this is what comes out of it. But there’s no denying the fact that I have always been a big fan of Italian horror films. And yes, this movie has sort of like the aesthetic of a Giallo movie. You know, the likes of the Bara’s and the Argento’s of the world. But just naturally, because it deals with this medical condition, you’re naturally going to compare it to things that Cronenberg had done as well. The body horror definitely is such a big part of this film. And I can’t pinpoint it to, let’s say one inspiration. I would say it’s a combination of things.
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One thing I was really struck by was the soundtrack for the film in terms of how it sort of was twisted and mirrored what was happening on screen. Can you talk a little bit about your inspiration for that?
WAN: Yes. I mean, for me the soundtrack or just the soundscape in general, like, you know, whether it’s the sound design or the music or whatever else goes into the film, the effects and so on, it’s always been very prevalent for me in my horror films to sort of focus on the soundtrack and the sound design – or just all my movies, just in general. I’ve always said that you know, we’ve seen time and time again that, like, a lot of horror movies, the scary horror movies are the stuff that you don’t see on screen, it’s just kind of what you hear. And what you hear conjures up these images in your head that aren’t actually physically there and you’re not quite looking at it. So that’s a philosophy that I obviously have taken from my supernatural horror films, and now I’ve applied it to everything as well.
And so it was really important that – just to give you an example of the stuff that I would focus on in terms of the soundscape is I wanted Gabriel, when he first comes back to life at the start of the movie, I wanted the soundscape to represent him in the respect that like Gabriel he’s been reborn. And I really wanted the soundscape to sort of start off small with him, like a child growing up, almost like a child throwing a tantrum. And as the movie progresses, he becomes more and more eloquent. That was something that is for me depicted in the way he speaks in the film, you know, with very few words at his disposal, and by the end, he’s quite eloquent. That was something that I really wanted to have the sound design represent that aspect of him.
I think we’ve had a really good run of horror movies in recent years. I think your efforts have certainly played a role in that. Did you feel it was important now for you to reconnect with your horror roots, especially in between doing some big action spectacles and things like that. And also, have you kept up with some of the other stuff that’s been going on in the genre?
WAN: You know, it’s funny that you pointed that out. It is a big part of why I wanted to go back and doMalignant, and make this film the way it is. Over the last 10 years between theInsidiousfilms and theConjuringfilms, I’ve become known as the supernatural ghost guy who comes up with these jump scares. I’m not a fan of repeating myself or at least not repeating this this often, and I just felt like it was time for me to do something a bit different again and and really kind of harken back to my harder hitting horror films that I broke out with. And really to let the hardcore horror fans out there know that, hey, I haven’t forgotten about them.
I don’t want to be just stuck just doing, you know, the one thing that I’ve become known for right now. I don’t like to repeat myself and that was a lot of the driving force behind makingMalignantthe way it is – and also, you know, not wanting to make a sequel, do a remake, whatever. I just want to come up with an original story that allows me the freedom to experiment with different kinds of filmmaking, to play with prosthetics, play with practical effects and also to play with visual effects to a certain level and make movies with people that I want to collaborate with.
Really at the end of the day, I just want to keep reinventing myself. I don’t want to get stale doing – I’m very thankful for what I’ve achieved in this genre, especially, but I still think I have a lot more to give and I want to keep finding other stuff to do it with. I mean, there’s a reason I didn’t come back to doConjuring 3, because I was too busy makingMalignantand that was my primary goal, was to go off and come up with something different, something new and to continue kind of exploring stuff that interests me.
Going back to what you were saying with the genre blender, I noticed that withMalignant, it’s an amalgamation of everything that you’ve done from the start of your career up toAquaman. So what is it aboutMalignantthat made you want to put everything that you’ve learned throughout your entire filmography together in this particular movie?
WAN: I think it’s really more than anything, I’m playing with a lot of themes that have always fascinated me and that have gone back, you know, as far as the start of my career. And I think I’m not so much necessarily doing a tribute to myself. I just think that would be very weird, but I do think that there are just certain themes that I keep coming back to, you know. Like in the same way, if you watch a Guillermo Del Toro movie, he has these themes that he keeps going back to, that he loves, and he has a certain aesthetic that he kind of goes with, but he applies them to different kinds of stories. I would say it’s kind of in that same spirit that I want to do different things, but touch on certain stuff that I’ve learned from the past and that I feel like I’m not quite done with them yet. I still feel like I have more things to say about them and it’s really that. But the key is, you know, hopefully I’m not makingSawagain, I’m not doingDead Silenceagain, I’m telling a completely brand new story.
Malignantis now in theaters and streaming on HBO Max.
