By Terry Sherwood
Madness is a loss of perception, confusion from the norm and sometimes displaced feelings of persecution and rebellion. Usually, in genre fiction, it’s brought on by memory or the evil entity seeking revenge.
The best films turn it into a rollercoaster ride, however, Malum turns it into a mess with a poor script, and characters, making an exercise is futile viewing. The picture makes the confusing but ultimately rewarding work of Jess Franco like Venus in Furs (1969) appear straightforward.
The plot concerns a rookie police officer Jessica (Jessica Sula) uncovering a family connection to a mysterious cult. In the opening sequence, Jessica’s father Will (Eric Olsen) suffers from the guilt of not saving all the victims of a cult abduction and ritual murder. The film is somewhat effective in portraying this through video resembling works and chants like other rural cults involving a spiritual leader. Will goes on a rampage killing fellow officers in the station and ultimately himself. Flash forward to the present day and you get the now grown daughter Jessica who wants to follow in her father’s footsteps in doing police work in the station where he served and ultimately cracked up. Jessica is the lone person at the station as the force has moved to a new location setting up a night of terror which turns out to be nothing but an incoherent exercise in characters running in and out with flashes of gore and screaming.
When the monster’s hallucination and cult visitations start to happen Malum takes on the look of a horror survivor video game with characters running across the background, loud noises, and bloody gore for no reason at all before coasting to a nonsensical conclusion.
The cult people are all made of wood which makes the actors in the abhorrent Skinamarink (2022) seem in control of a non-existent story. I understand this is an independent film and actors can be hard to come by and asked to do things they have not experienced before, so one needs concession. The concession does not include a lack of plot or even a modicum of development.
Malum suffers from a lackluster lead who seems unable to let loose even in the pivotal moments of the conclusion. The cult leader John Malum (Chaney Morrow) spouts idiotic words that make no sense and leers into the camera like a poor example of a student film. The trouble is this does not say it is a student film. This isn’t even the fun logic of Ed Wood’s Plan Nine from Outer Space, almost babbling for babbling sake.
The one saving grace is underused and should have been the lead in the appearance of Clarke Wolfe as Dorothea. Wolfe is almost unrecognizable yet had the on-screen charisma to be the lead which would have worked to move the whatever you think the story is about.
Malum is a mess of conflicting impulses, silly eye-popping gore, screams, laughing people, and ridiculous macho dialogue all for the purpose only known perhaps who wrote this.
Bloody Flicks 