Malevolent is a 2018 British horror film directed by Olaf de Fleur Johannesson from a screenplay by Ben Ketai and Eva Konstantopoulos, based on the novel Hush by Konstantopoulos. The film centers on a brother-sister team of scam artists who are making money from faked paranormal encounters. During an assignment at a country house, the team gets more than they bargained for, and one by one, they begin to lose grip on reality.
In 1986 Scotland, Angela and Jackson are American siblings who, with a small team of paranormal investigators, run a fake medium scam on clients who believe their houses are haunted. The team uses the reputation of the siblings' late mother to promote Angela's powers as a medium. Jackson orchestrates the scams because of a debt he owes to loan sharks.
Strange incidents begin to occur during some of the scams, which goes unnoticed by the rest of the team. Angela, believing she is hallucinating, compares her story to that of her mother, who heard voices and wound up committing suicide because she saw people who weren't there. A new client, Mrs. Greene, requests they come to stop the "screaming" of ghost girls who apparently haunt the house. Angela is too disturbed and shaken from their last assignment so she turns down the request; she looks into the history of the caller's house and discovers that the owner’s foster children were all found dead with their mouths sewn shut 15 years prior, and her son, Herman, was blamed. Jackson, needing the money to pay off the loan sharks, agrees to the job, despite reluctance from his sister, whom he cons into joining, despite Angela's worries she is going insane.
Jackson and his team of technicians formulate a plan to con Mrs. Greene. While Elliot (the cameraman) films Angela around the mansion, she sees the spirits of the murdered girls and follows them into the restricted East Wing where the floor collapses under Elliot's feet. He falls and injures his foot, and in his rescue, Jackson and Angela discover the place where the girls had been kept. Angela realizes her powers are real, but Jackson denies it all as a coincidence, while Angela attempts to fix Elliot up.
Mrs. Greene informs Jackson that they have failed to exorcise the ghosts so far and that they should leave, as she believes them to be scam artists. It becomes apparent that Jackson has been seeing things himself (previously using drugs and headphones to block it out), and finally decides to abandon the job after Mrs. Greene implies that she was involved in the girls' murders. Jackson finds Beth, his technician/girlfriend, unconscious with her mouth sewn shut in the attic. Attempting to flee with the others, Jackson accidentally crashes the car into a tree, killing Beth.
Herman appears at the crash site and knocks Jackson and Elliot unconscious with a shovel. Herman then takes Jackson up to the house to sew up his mouth. However, Jackson continues to fight back and make noise, causing Mrs. Greene to restrain him further; she cuts out his tongue, breaks his jaw with a hammer and chisel, and then sews his mouth shut. She then orders Herman to take him out to the shed to kill him, but is stopped by Angela, who came back for her brother, but is captured in her attempt to fight.
Elliot manages to kill Herman just as Mrs. Greene begins sewing Angela's mouth closed. Enraged by her son's murder, Mrs. Greene attacks Elliot with a meat cleaver, hitting him repeatedly. The spirits of the dead girls appear and Angela pleads and begs with them to help. They begin to scream, distracting Mrs. Greene from killing Elliot long enough for Angela to free herself to kill her. Limping away from the house, Angela sees Jackson's ghost searching for Beth before wandering away down the road. Angela breaks down crying, attracting the attention of a passing car.
Angela and Elliot are taken to the hospital. On the phone with her grandfather, Angela tells him what has happened, and her grandfather sobs, telling her she can't be alone now, assuming she is just as unstable as her mother. But Angela replies that she isn't alone, and a dark shadow of a presumed other ghost passes over her.
The film was released on 5 October 2018 by Netflix.
Reception
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 55% based on 11 critics, with an average rating of 5.5/10.[2]
Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com wrote "It's not going to be anyone's favorite new horror film this holiday season, but it's a solid enough start to the month when temperatures drop and it becomes cooler to tell ghost stories".[3]
