Giallo Reborn With MALIGNANT & THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW

 Giallo: An Italian subgenre of proto-slasher movies that were also crime mysteries. It's that thing that Dario Argento got famous for. You know. It's a fun movie genre with a cult following, which I consider myself a part of, but it's never really been a mainstream fixture. For whatever reason, in 2021, quite a few English-language films directed by A-list talent with major giallo influence came out. I'm not interested in Edgar Wright's "Last Night in Soho" for the purposes of this, but rather the giddy silly-on-purpose thrillers from James Wan and, oddly enough, Joe Wright. 

 I'm not sure if I've ever seen a film be quite so obvious in its influence as "Malignant", which brazenly copies everything from Argento's lighting to, uh, Argento's murder weapon. I, for one, think this is super cool and fun! That Italian horror lighting is mostly distinct reds and blues, which are especially out of vogue these days, when all horror movies need to be either dark and dreary or ironically neon-infused. It looks lovely, which makes "Malignant" look lovely. More specifically, it looks lovely in a way that's very different from how the "Conjuring" movies look (at least in how it's lit... Wan has always been a big fan of 90 and 180 degree camera pans, and that's still on display in this new film).

  The murder weapon looks, to my somewhat educated eyes, to be the exact same fancy mini blade used in Argento's "Opera", which is probably the best overall point of reference. "Opera" is gruesome with its gore, but several of its slasher set pieces are really quite humorous in tone, especially one involving a costume designer. Wan's movie is relatively low on fake blood compared to "Saw", but the iconic/ironic chair throw that caps off a big third act set piece is a close tonal match. The style and the attitude are a pitch perfect homage to a somewhat niche original. I can admit that the substance of the narrative is ridiculous. I'll disagree that it's bad, but yes the mystery of the first half is a bit boring and too slow, and then the reveal is simultaneously the most absurd thing I saw in a movie last year and... far too obviously foreshadowed? The film's cold open is dumb and bad, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was added in reshoots because test audiences thought the twist was a bit too ridiculous. "Malignant" is not for everyone. Specifically, it's not for people who demand that their horror movies feel grounded in reality in order to feel scary, nor for people who think that a horror monster absolutely must be a metaphor for something. But as a sly wink of a thriller? As a showcase of style? I think "Malignant" is glorious.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

 ... Less good, and less worthy of being called giallo, is Joe Wright's "The Woman In The Window". I have two specific points to make here. The first is that, like "Malignant", I think the style is delightful but acknowledge that the substance is absurd (and in this case, very bad!). The second is that calling it "Joe Wright's" anything might not be all that accurate. The film had notoriously troubled reshoots, and Wright spent most of his "Cyrano" awards campaign disowning it. It was supposed to be released by Fox in the ancient pre-covid year of 2019, before Disney decided they didn't want the film when they bought the company, and it ultimately got dumped onto Netflix in 2021 with no meaningful promotion. I think the root of the problem is that "The Woman In The Window", the story, is a pulp murder mystery, and no amount of lipstick on pigs could contort it into the kind of movie that wins an Oscar. You hire Joe Wright and greenlight a Scott Rudin production because it has Oscar potential, not because you want a silly wine mom thriller. The most obvious victim of the reshoots is that Amy Adams has multiple full conversations with her therapist (screenwriter Tracy Letts) that are heard but not quite seen. Sometimes it's played as a voiceover while Adams wonders her apartment, and even more confusingly sometimes we'll see Letts on screen but framed in such a way that you never see either character's mouth while they speak. She has a tenant in her basement, who oscillates wildly between helpful understanding of her agoraphobia and violently angry for no real reason - except, I suppose, to give the audience a red herring about who might be involved in the murder. (Gary Oldman's character is very similar, it's a dire piece of overacting that seems to serve no purpose except to make the audience assume his guilt.) The whole aspect of the story where she has agoraphobia is so lazy it feels like more of a contrivance to keep the filming in one building than a meaningful part of the character, which is made even worse when she magically overcomes the agoraphobia with no real issue in the film's climax. 

 So why is this throwaway trash worth watching? A few reasons, really. Julianne Moore gives a wonderful performance in one long scene as a noir-y woman in trouble. Here, the movie's dire grasping at several different tones and ideas at the same time works to make her character feel chaotic. And then we have the entire aesthetic. Julianne Moore dies. I've seen enough woman-catches-a-murder stories to know they usually look boring and go light on on blood. Instead, Joe Wright shows us a fast zoom out of Moore, surrounded by darkness, that gets filled in with artificial blood spurts, like paint tossed onto film stock. It's ludicrous. But it's bold. I love it.

There are more examples of downright mad cinematography, such as an Amy Adams monologue that starts off looking like a normal movie, gradually turns into a theater stage-like spotlight, and then transposes a wrecked car into her apartment. That car wreck, which fits into the story in a truly stupid twist, has that same deep red/blue lighting of Argento!

 I can't pretend that "The Woman In The Window" is altogether successful, or that anyone involved agreed on exactly what kind of movie they were making. But it sizzles on its own garish terms. I think it's worth watching.

⭐⭐⭐