‘Malum’ Review: Blood, Cults, and Demons Make for a Scary Last Shift

Ideas are such a funny thing. When they arrive in your mind, they aren’t truly formed, and even many years later, they might never truly reach their final state. Ideas are always transforming into something else, they are constantly evolving, and because of this, artists have the chance to fully refined them to the extent of their abilities. Malum, is a new horror film coming from a mind full of ideas. The mind of a person who has taken the chance to take one of those ideas and refine it just a bit more and has produced some solid results.

Malum is a film directed by Anthony DiBlasi and stars Jessica Sula, Chaney Morrow, Candice Cooke, Clarke Wolfe, Morgan Lennon, and Valerie Loo. The film is a sort of remake or reimagining of one of DiBlasi’s previous films, titled “Last Shift.” That film became a cult classic soon after its release, and it is one of those movies that really shows the potential of independent filmmaking. The film tells the story of a young rookie cop who is searching for answers regarding what happened to her father years prior, and the answers seem to be inside an old police station.

The term reboot or remake has been tossed around a bunch in the past few decades. Franchises face the threat of stagnation and decide to delete everything and start from scratch. While in some other cases, producers just want to jump to the conception stage of an idea and just use an old one and dress it in different clothes. These cases are prevalent throughout Hollywood, but only on very few occasions the opportunity to call something a reimagining present itself, and Malum is one of those cases.

For example, in the world of video games, the term reimagining is a lot more common. Video games are such a rapidly changing medium that games that were released just half a decade ago could be done in an entirely different way by the same creators with the current technology. FromSoftware, a Japanese development company, has been using the same ideas for more than two decades now, and yet, they are regarded as one of the best in the business. The same is happening with Capcom and their Resident Evil remakes.

The reason for such high praise in these examples is that these developers are taking the chance to redo games they have done before by applying refinement, experience, and more money after the fact. And so, the Elden Ring and Demon’s Souls might look and play very similarly, but between them, there are years of refinement, experience, and more modern technology that make Elden Ring just a much better version of Demon’s Souls. The same thing happens with Malum. The film could be labeled as a reboot or a remake, but it is really so much more.

DiBlasi takes his original film and, from it, extracts the strongest elements and mixes them with new sequences and scenes that expand the world where Last Shift took place and take it to a new level. There is no need to see Last Shift before Malum, but for those curious about the creative process and how ideas can take different forms, watching both films back to back becomes quite a satisfying experience. DiBlasi and his team manage to take all these ideas and ramp them up on the execution level.

Malum is just a much better-produced film. It is clear that DiBlasi got much more budget for this project, and you can see it on the screen. When it comes to visual effects, everything in this movie just feels more professional. Malum is quite a violent film, and the team behind the execution of these scenes has done a fantastic job creating some truly nightmarish imagery. Some sequences were present in the original film but feel better realized in this one. However, Malum is composed mostly of new and exciting stuff outside those scenes.

The storytelling feels just much more expansive, and from the impactful opening sequence, it becomes clear that the movie has much bigger aspirations. In the same way, that Sam Raimi expanded Evil Dead to Evil Dead 2, Malum feels like it could be just the beginning of a world worth exploring. As the story progresses, new revelations show us that we are dealing with forces that could be just way beyond our comprehension. Some Midnight Meat Train and Lovecraftian vibes in here are truly appreciated.

The cast also helps bring the story to life. Jessica Sula feels like the perfect “Final Girl,” and her performance in the film is really an anchor for the entire situation. Meanwhile, Chaney Morrow pulls off some really creepy stuff in an amazing performance. However, this is Sula’s show, and as the movie progresses, you can feel her mental state deteriorating increasingly with each passing hour. Without her in the picture, the film could have gone in a really wrong direction.

Malum decides to use visions as one of its main narrative devices. And while it is very cool to pick up the story pieces and put them together by ourselves, for some people, the movie might end up feeling more like just an incoherent collection of scenes. Instead of a story rich in lore that trust that you can appreciate. It is a gamble that DiBlasi and his team are willing to take, but there will certainly be a big part of the audience that will not gel with this style of storytelling.

In the end, Malum feels like a step forward for DiBlasi as a director and maybe the beginning of something truly marvelous regarding the world portrayed in the film. Maybe DiBlasi will choose to move on to something entirely new, but there is definitely a lot to be explored in the world that he and his team have created. The storytelling might be a bit obtuse for some audience members, but Malum doesn’t feel like it was made to be a crowd-pleaser. Instead, the movie works by its rules, and some of us wouldn’t like it any other way.

SCORE: 8/10