As much a franchise-maker as he is a hit-maker, director James Wan also creates characters who seem as though they could survive the events surrounding them. From the Saw franchises' enduring villain to the tenacious families showcased in The Conjuring series, most projects in which Wan is involved feature believable figures in unbelievable scenarios.
Wan's newest, Malignant, is no exception. However, there are several characters in the film whom audiences know will not survive to the final reel. Whether it be lapses in common sense or more telling signs of intellectual inefficiency, not all of Malignant's characters are geniuses.
7 Derek Mitchell
Far from being Malignant's nicest character, Derek is also far from being the smartest. The cruelty he displays towards his wife is also the source of his intelligence deficit.
Derek couldn't have known that slamming his wife's head against the wall would unleash her evil teratoma. What he should have known is that that could quite easily cause a miscarriage. Calling that an accident doesn't cover Derek's cruelty, it makes him emotionally immature at best. His gruesome death, one of Malignant's callbacks to Giallo horror films, was very much avoidable.
6 Serena May
It's revealed that Serena was 15 when she had Emily/Madison, so her allowing the doctors to work on her daughter was understandable. Even still, something was fishy at the Simion Research Hospital. There's an argument to be made that she should have been skeptical of any team of doctors who want to work on a child in a secluded, castle-like facility.
Where Serena's intelligence really comes into question is her scene in the tunnels, where she runs the Seattle Underground Tour. There's a strange noise, naturally, followed by flickering lights. When the lights go out down the corridor, that's the very moment when an intelligent person would turn and bolt for the nearest access to the ground level above.
5 Detective Kekoa Shaw
If anyone should have known that Gabriel was attached to Madison, it was Detective Kekoa Shaw. On the surface, believing Madison about Gabriel being a separate person—which she wasn't lying about because she didn't know—makes sense.
However, once he comes face to gruesome face with Gabriel, he should have been at least partially aware or even skeptical of the fact that Gabriel has the exact same body shape and hair as Madison. The fact that Gabriel is able to administer near-fatal wounds to Shaw is not entirely surprising. Perhaps it's Shaw's infatuation with Sydney, but his eye seldom seems on the ball.
4 Sydney Lake
If Malignant becomes a franchise, the audience can expect a reappearance from Sydney Lake. It would also be fair for them to expect her to survive until the end—and that's not just because she is crucial to the life of the protagonist.
Sydney seems like a detective in her own right, and Malignant's twists towards the end essentially occur because of her. It's Sydney who goes to Simion to gain more information on her sister's situation, and she finds plenty of it. Furthermore, what she does with the information is the very thing that saves her life and countless others. She tells Madison the truth that Gabriel is responsible for her miscarriages, and this information empowers Madison to sublimate the murderous teratoma.
3 Detective Regina Moss
Detective Regina Moss' seemingly cynical disbelief is actually what makes her consistently right. While it's not as if she could have guessed the Madison/Gabriel twist, she was technically correct in her assertion that Maddie isn't all she's purported to be.
Moss is also a beacon of professionalism as well as a comedian, a subtle but definitive sign of intelligence. Detective Regina Moss is someone who makes the characters surrounding her feel safer just with her presence; not only is she brave, but she's very smart and proactive, as well. When all is said and done, Moss is one of Malignant's best characters.
2 Doctor Florence Weaver
Dr. Florence Weaver may have meddled in something she didn't understand, but that doesn't mean that she isn't intelligent. Furthermore, she was smart and brave enough to grab the dart gun from the floor and shoot Gabriel.
Working in child reconstructive surgery is a fairly telling indication of Weaver's intelligence, to begin with. Furthermore, while it may seem intelligent to just remove Gabriel from Madison's body, it wouldn't be. Gabriel and Madison essentially share one brain, and removing Gabriel would have unknown and almost certainly detrimental effects.
1 Madison Lake-Mitchell/Emily May
Repressed memories are very, very difficult to retrieve. For this reason, Madison is the film's most intelligent character, as she had the mental fortitude to sublimate a powerful "twin" personality—and not only Gabriel, but her true identity of Emily May, as well.
However, Gabriel did play a part in his own sublimation by feeding her false information on her reality. Her miscarriages were really just his survival tactic, as, all the while, he was feeding off her fetuses. The "malignant tumor," as it were, has been feeding off its host. This makes it all the more telling that Madison is able to cognitively suppress Gabriel back into hibernation. The power of her mind is what defeats the film's antagonist.
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