Film Review: Malevolent

I really like the premise of Malevolent, the new Netflix release that you probably didn’t know about before clicking on this. It’s about a brother-sister duo, Jackson (Ben Lloyd-Hughes) and Angela (Florence Pugh) who run a ghostbusting scam, in which Angela pretends to be a medium who convinces ghosts to leave residencies. They utilize per-recorded sound, a scripted routine, and various other tricks to convince their clients that their supposed haunting is real and being dealt with.

And because it’s a horror film, Jackson, Angela, and their other team members, Elliot (Scott Chambers) and Beth (Georgina Bevan), find themselves in a legitimately haunted house where the ghosts are making themselves known to Angela. That house being a former foster home owned by Mrs. Green (Celia Imrie), where three young girls died many years ago. Things escalate, and our characters find themselves in over their head as they make sense of what is going on.

Admittedly, the film doesn’t take as much advantage of the “fraudulent ghostbusters enter a haunted house” premise as much as I would’ve hoped. After a brief sequence that lets us in on their operation, and the obligatory “characters doing business as usual before they realize what’s happening” moment, the film quickly delves into more traditional spook house fare. But it’s really solid spook house stuff! Director, Olaf de Fleur Johannesson, does a decent job at building up tension to satisfying scares that smartly uses the space around the characters. There are several jump scares, but few are false, and none feel gratuitous.

Florence Pugh is a really strong lead here, which shouldn’t be that surprising if you saw her in the excellent Lady Macbeth last year. She has a compelling and emotionally grounding screen presence that offers a semblance of depth that the writing only hints at. There’s a throughline involving her relationship with her father, still grief stricken by the mother’s suicide, but it doesn’t quite connect as strongly, as if certain thematic beats were cut out or something. Yet, she sells it. It’s the kind of performance that works in getting you invested in a movie that is otherwise filled by disposable characters.

Though, that’s not to say the rest of the cast is bad. They’re fine, but certainly overshadowed by Pugh. Scott Chambers gets a moment that makes him likable and engaging. Ben Lloyd-Hughes is given a scene where we find out he owes money to bad people, which further motivates him to continue the con, despite his sister’s concerns following a strange experience in the opening sequence. It honestly seems unnecessary since that thread doesn’t come back in any significant way, but it does add some conflict to their dynamic. Celia Imrie classes the film up a bit, and brings a delightfully unexpected element to the more gnarly second half of the film.

The film is definitely rough around the edges. There are some clear budgetary restrictions, some of the rules for how the paranormal stuff works aren’t particularly clear, and there are some details that probably had purpose on paper, but seem incidental on screen. That said, the film manages to work around these flaws well enough to where it doesn’t feel distracting in the moment, and Florence Pugh is a bit part of that. Plus, it clocks in at just over 85 minutes when it hits the credits, so it’s a real quick sit.

Malevolent isn’t going to be anyone’s favorite horror movie by the end of the year, but it’s still a really solid effort that is worth your time if you’re looking for a gnarly ghost movie that takes some fun turns. Florence Pugh carries the film well, and the scares are compelling and engaging while serving a greater point to the story. Plus, it’s worth seeing for a beat towards the end that is both fiendishly clever and a shockingly effective gut punch. The filmmaking in the rest of the movie doesn’t quite live up to that one moment, but it did elevate most of what came before in an interesting way. I’m sure by the time Florence Pugh returns to horror with Midsommar – the next film by Hereditary helmer, Ari Aster – most will forget about this, but don’t be so dismissive. As far as these kinds of low budget, disposable horror films go, you could do a whole lot worse.