MOVIE REVIEW: Malum

For moviegoers like myself tired of the constant injection of feminist and divestment genealogical tropes in modern cinema, Anthony Diblasi has arrived with Malum – a gory, psychological thriller to splatter blood in the face of what constitutes today’s woke feature presentations. Shot in the state where Sandra Bland got popped, Malum stars Jessica Sula (who previously was only memorable for screaming her lungs out in nothing but panties and a crop top in M. Night Shyamalan’s Split) as the daughter of a cop who goes ballistic and becomes a cop killer before taking his own life. Sula’s character inherits her deceased father’s post as a law enforcement official herself, and finds that he left some stones unturned for her to trip over and ultimately bust her head in the best way possible.

Though the timeline of the film doesn’t always make sense, and the small cast tends to look goofy in instances of the single enclosed setting of an empty precinct with certain props (from glass eyes to glowing contact lenses and floating latex masks) bring out the “indie” in this indie film; for the most part the visual effects solely handled by Russell FX (Hellraiser) combined with the unsettling synthesized score by Samuel LaFlamme provide pillars of this picture to marvel at. I have not seen heads squashed like a pumpkin this well since A24’s Midsommar. The suicide scenes are horrendous in it’s realism with eyeball’s popping out of asphyxiated faces to the attention paid to the direction that blood spews out of a head when a bullet is put in one from a certain angle. Malum is heavy on gore and light on humor, the way that horror films absolutely should be.

Filming the feature where Sandra Bland was killed, having Sula’s on-screen mother (Candice Coke) grip a miniature white knight in her death throes, having Eric Olson go on a tirade about his views on law enforcement as he portrays the ghost of a cop with some bodies under his belt that sounded like something a speaker at a “Defund The Police” rally would sayz and witnessing the way that Sula’s rookie cop is completely subservient to European Westernized ideals that she views in a patriarchal role (on and off screen her father is of European descent); it’s no secret that Diblasi has used Malum as a vehicle to exploit the hot button issues in U.S. society that mainstream films also use but embellish. Diblasi instead uses the poisons in U.S. society to his advantage, going as far as equating divestment to joining a murder cult, and the results are a mature take on bloodsport with many allegories littering the cutting room floor as much as the guts and gristle, letting the audience in on how the director truly feels about a myriad of headline grabbing as well as the art of filmmaking as a whole.

Malum is not for the squeamish, and has enough shocking factors to make even the most stoic thrillseeker squeal like a pig. Deserving of a wider release, Diblasi in choosing Sula as his scream queen has propelled Malum to meet the bar that Damien Scott Leone set in 2022 with Terrifier 2. At this point, it will be impossible to trump Diblasi’s latest effort as the best horror film of 2023, and we’re only at second quarter.

Score : 4.5/5

Director: Anthony DiBlasi

Stars:
Jessica Sula
Natalie Victoria
Clarke Wolfe & more…

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