Malignant

In one sense director James Wan tips his hand early in Malignant, scoring and shooting a series of routine domestic disturbances with a electronic throb that seems to work against the film's creeping, supernatural, tensions. Wan weaves in the lessons he learned on technologically fluent blockbusters like Fast & Furious 7 and Aquaman to arrive at a low budget, sequel friendly, horror idea that presents with a sense of scale far beyond its comparatively meagre budget. Written by Akela Cooper - based on a story conceived by Cooper, Wan and actress-screenwriter Ingrid Bisu - Malignant draws from umpteen horror sources, blending them together into a film that, mechanically, ranges from lightly directionless scenes that stutter along with a flat, soap opera, affect to body-popping mania. 

Beginning with a spot of surgical splatter that prickles memories of Eric Red's Body Parts or Chris Walas' The Fly II, Malignant rapidly changes shape, briefly taking on the rhythms of a windswept gothic haunting before lurching off into franchise murder mystery then martial arts mayhem. Without giving too much away, Malignant is concerned with an anatomical disparity that it expresses through constant tonal shifts and stylistic upheaval. Safari Riot's pompous electronic rearrangement of Pixies' Where is My Mind is Wan's battering ram, arriving like an anvil to signal these scalp-scratching transitions. Annabelle Wallis' Madison Lake-Mitchell, styled here as a put upon wife trapped in a mouldering relationship, shares a psychic link with a homicidal tumour battering its way through the doctors and psychiatrists who cut him out of his host decades earlier. This sentient melanoma - named Gabriel - now has control of a zipped-up, androgynous, body that he puppeteers far beyond its limits. Limbs twist and bend at ungodly angles; the bone-cracking actions directed by an uncaring pilot. 

Fast & Furious 7

In the context of Fast & Furious 7, Han (Sung Kang)'s immolation in Furious 6's post-credit stinger - itself a holdover from the otherwise rootless The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift - becomes a rough shift. Furious 7 isn't the film Jason Statham's sudden, violent appearance seemed to anticipate. He's not an imported action slasher here to downsize Dominic Toretto's extended family, instead he's a perpetual annoyance in the Wile E Coyote mode. Whether director James Wan and screenwriter Chris Morgan's sequel was always meant to be like this isn't clear. Perhaps everyone just lost their taste for brutality after Paul Walker's untimely passing? Furious 7 doesn't even attempt to be apocalyptic. It's uplifting and celebratory - safe even.

Danger in Wan's film is subverted at every turn by zero injury, last minute rescues and a CG aesthetic that reads as intentionally cartoonish. Furious 7 is reassuring then. We don't dwell on harm, everyone is immediately dusted off and dressed up for the next speeding encounter. It's a dream of invincibility. In Furious 7's last moments Vin Diesel transcends the Toretto character to speak directly to the audience about his friend Paul Walker. It's brilliant and silly, a genuinely touching epitaph from a man who fills his social media full of schmaltzy image macros. Wan honours Walker by hinting at an untapped potential for close-quarters struggle. The director pairs his departed star with Tony Jaa's elbows and knees for recurring bouts of fisticuffs. Their brief dust-ups are the film's best angles, full of energy and, most importantly, invention. Obviously Walker can't match Jaa's Kinamotay assaults, but he does look good soaking up the damage.

ROCK BOTTOM

A longer international trailer for Furious 7 with added Kurt Russell and Attitude Era wrestling moves.

SUPER BOWL SPOTS - Furious 7

Horror mogul James Wan keeps Vin Diesel's vest franchise ticking over with Jason Statham and CG devastation. Presumably, considering everyone is decked out in evening wear, Furious 7 is going to focus on the gang hobnobbing and beating up rich people? Really Furious 7 and its predecessors represent the most successful updating of the A-Team formula - easily digestible, chummy archetypes and their endlessly customised vehicles against the world. Plus, what's more exciting than the insinuation that Statham's underslung grenade launcher actually helped propel Big Vin to safety instead of blowing him up? Statham needs to learn Fast Physics.