Audience viewership According to
Samba TV, the film was streamed by 753,000 U.S. households in its first weekend. By the end of its first month, the film had been watched in over 1.6 million U.S. households.
Box office Malignant grossed $13.4million in the United States and Canada, and $21.5million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $34.9million. It made $2million on its first day, and went on to debut to $5.6million, finishing third at the box office. It dropped 51% to $2.7million in its second weekend, finishing fifth.
Critical response On
review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 76% based on 172 reviews, with an average rating of 6.3/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Although
Malignant isn't particularly scary, director James Wan's return to horror contains plenty of gory thrills—and a memorably bonkers twist." On
Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 51 out of 100 based on 23 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by
CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale, while
PostTrak reported 59% of audience members gave it a positive score, with 38% saying they would definitely recommend it. Meagan Navarro of
Bloody Disgusting rated the film 3.5 out of 5 and said, "It's silly, it's outrageous, and it's a blast." Josh Millican of
Dread Central gave the film 4 out of 5 and called it "the best horror movie of the year."
Michael Gingold of
Rue Morgue described the film as having "WTF energy" but criticized the implausibility of the plot, saying, "Too often, it's hard to know whether Wan and co. are kidding or not." A.A. Dowd of
The A.V. Club gave the film a grade of B, describing it as "a zany psychodramatic creepfest that, here and there, veers into gory action hilarity, as though
Pazuzu had taken over the body of a
Batman movie". Charles Bramesco of
The Guardian gave the film a score of 3 out of 5 stars, writing: "around the midway point... the script shifts gears into an agreeable register of B-movie lunacy, but it takes too much of the nearly two-hour run time to get there".
Frank Scheck of
The Hollywood Reporter was more critical, writing: "The film might have been outrageously bizarre fun if it displayed any humor or ironic self-consciousness, but everything is played so straight that viewers will find themselves laughing not with the film, but at it." Lindsey Bahr of the
Associated Press gave the film a score of 1 out of 4 stars, describing it as "simply ridiculous" and writing: "If you must see
Malignant, a theater might honestly be the best bet. That way at least you can laugh along in utter shock with your fellow theater-goers." Simon Abrams of
RogerEbert.com also gave the film 1 out of 4 stars, describing it as "a horror movie that is as long as it is underwhelming." Some critics suggested the film was intended as parody or
self-parody. Ian Linn of
Study Breaks wrote, "
Malignant seems to take these tropes of Wan's earlier works to such extreme lengths it becomes difficult to see them as anything other than deliberate self-parody."The film ranks on Rotten Tomatoes' Best Horror Movies of 2021.
Plagiarism accusation In 2022, filmmaker Adam Cosco filed a lawsuit against James Wan and Ingrid Bisu, claiming the film had plagiarized content from a screenplay he had written titled
Little Brother, which he claimed they had previous access to. Details of the lawsuits pointed out that both screenplays featured: "a twist that the protagonist has her twin brother absorbed inside her in the form of a malignant tumor, an inciting incident where the main female character is a victim of violence at the hands of a man that allows the twin to take over her body, and scenes of hypnotherapy in which the protagonist recalls repressed memories from childhood, among other things." The lawsuit was eventually settled
out of court in 2024, with details not disclosed. ==References==