Malevolent

My Florence Pugh film festival ends with Malevolent, a Netflix cheapie that Pugh may look back on with a wince when she's a big star. It takes a good idea and turns it into a piece of gory schlock.

Directed by Olaf de Fleur, Malevolent is about a brother-sister team of paranormal investigators who scam clients by claiming to remove ghosts from their premises. The brother is played snidely by Ben Lloyd-Hughes, who listens to self-help tapes and has pulled his sister, Pugh, into the con. She actually has a gift for connecting with spirits, but Lloyd-Hughes believes none of it. Interestingly, though the film is set in Scotland, the film portrays these siblings as Americans, a nice commentary on how Americans are generally con artists, since our president is one..

So of course when the pair show up at a house where young girls were murdered, there will be real ghosts. In some ways the film reminded me of The Orphanage, a much better ghost story about dead children.

Malevolent has a few genuine scares--it employs the standard "turn around and there's the ghost of a girl with her mouth sewn shut" scene quite well, but the plot is convoluted and doesn't make complete sense. Pugh is very good, though. She has just signed to play a part in the next MCU film, Black Widow, so she is on the rise.