The 2021 horror film Malignant isn’t so much a straight-up horror movie as it is a whodunnit (or maybe a howdunnit) mystery — a patient, creepy puzzle bound by a gruesomely supernatural horror theme.

Spun from the masterful horror mind of James Wan, alongside Akela Cooper (M3GAN, American Horror Story), and Ingrid Bisu (Wan’s real-life wife who also plays a minor cop role in the movie), Malignant diverges from a lot of recent horror flicks — including Wan’s own output — by taking its sweet deliberate time in setting up, and then paying out, its slow but well-earned surprises.

Malignant isn’t the kind of horror movie that’s overly obsessed with juicing its key story beats for maximum-surprise impact. Instead, it’s more about yanking you in and getting you invested in all its possible causes and outcomes than in jump-scaring you out of your chair at every turn…

… Malignant is a moody, almost procedural murder mystery with a sweet side strain of slow-boiling horror… and, if we’re being really honest, it’s probably one of Wan’s most watchable and entertaining films.