The success of ‘Saw’ in 2004 allowed James Wan to break into the industry while lovers of the genre put his name on the list of filmmakers to keep track of. After the interesting ‘Death Sentence’ and ‘Silence from Evil’, both released in 2007, Blumhouse kept an eye on him and gave him carte blanche for the terribly effective ‘Insidious’ (2010), which not only put him in charge of a sequel, but it allowed him to get involved in a more ambitious project with Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema as sponsors.
In addition to ‘Insidious: Chapter 2’, In 2013 he released the brilliant ‘The Warren File: The Conjuring’, which began his own franchise from which the director returned to sign ‘The Warren File: The Enfield Case’ in 2016his last horror film until his triumphant return between titles mainstream.
After trying his luck in other people’s sagas with the spectacular ‘Fast & Furious 7’ (2015) and the successful ‘Aquaman’ (2018), he decided to take a break before putting on his swimsuit again to film ‘Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom’ ( 2023). It was on that return home when he gave us ‘Maligno’ (2021), a twisted madness that dares everything to give the viewer a fantastic bad time and that, once again, made its way into quite a few lists of the best current horror films to scare you.
“James Wan, an expert in horror like a cacophonous music box where echoes of classical Gothic literature, of the mannerism of the giallo and of slasher eightiesopts for a conscious abandonment of the linear narrative to delve into the unconscious, that terrain where terror has always felt more comfortable,” noted Fausto Fernández in his review of ‘Maligno’. “It concentrates the actions of the film in a spiral (of colors, false clues, hallucinations, dreams, murders, lies and truths) that never allows the viewer to stop and reflect (and that sometimes the script is tempted to do so) and takes him from one sequence to another, all of them of a formal beauty equal to their capacity to terrify us”.
‘Maligno’, available in the Netflix movie catalog, on Prime Video and on HBO Max, introduces us to Madison, a young woman paralyzed by visions of grisly murders. Her torment worsens when she discovers that these waking dreams are, in fact, reality.
Starring Annabelle Wallis (‘Annabelle’, ‘The Mummy’), Maddie Hasson (‘Mr. Mercedes’), George Young, Michole Briana White, Jacqueline McKenzie, Jake Abel and Ingrid Bisu, the film’s script is signed by Akela Cooper (‘Grimm’, ‘The 100’, ‘Luke Cage’) on an idea by Ingrid Bisu and Wan himself. A title to rescue while the best horror movies of 2024 are released to scare you.
Ricardo Rosado is a film critic, cultural journalist, expert in North American comedy, horror films of any kind and everything that happens between genres and formats. Raised on Steven Spielberg films, and spoiled since he encountered David Lynch, he has been writing for a decade about the art he consumes.
In FOTOGRAMAS you will read him commenting on the latest theatrical releases, promoting peace between Marvel and DC fans, reviewing all the Star Wars news or diving into the depths of the Netflix, HBO Max, Prime Video and Filmin catalogues. He also likes to make galleries and rankings of movies and series, but no one trusts his judgment too much.
After studying Audiovisual Communication at the Complutense University of Madrid, he created a film review blog with the hope of attending film festivals and press screenings for free. Now, after seven years writing in FOTOGRAMAS about the latest theatrical releases, current series and any content available on the different streaming channels, she still thinks it was worth it.
Frontman of two embarrassing musical projects, director of various video clips by heavy metal bands from Madrid and author of many short films hidden in the Internet, he is the editor and one of the proud members of the cultural podcast ‘Los de al lado de Pumares’ , a space that has allowed him to participate as a collaborator in other radio formats such as ‘Vamos de cine’ (Castilla-La Mancha Media) and ‘El Faro’ (Cadena SER), in addition to having made him one of the main voices of the videos of FRAMES.
