Haunted Houses and Even More Haunted Siblings
If you’ve ever wanted to watch Florence Pugh act circles around the undead, con artists, and her own movie, Malevolentis the Netflix horror for you. Released in 2018, this Scottish-set supernatural story follows a brother-sister team of professional ghost-fakers who discover — surprise! — that ghosts don’t take kindly to being faked. It’s The Conjuringmeets The Sting, except with more sewing needles and less competence from everyone not named Florence Pugh.
Director Olaf de Fleur Johannesson (whose name sounds like a Scandinavian spell) wrings surprising atmosphere out of the premise. What could’ve been a run-of-the-mill “oops, real ghosts” horror flick turns into a stylish, surprisingly emotional descent into guilt, trauma, and karmic payback. It’s dark, it’s tense, and it’s got the kind of grim humor that pairs perfectly with watching bad people get what’s coming to them.
Scam Artists, Ghosts, and Bad Decisions
Pugh plays Angela Sayers, a psychic-for-hire whose family business is less Ghostbusters and more Fraudbusters. She and her brother Jackson (Ben Lloyd-Hughes) travel around Scotland “banishing” spirits from the homes of grieving rich people. It’s all fun and games until Angela starts actually seeing things — whispering shadows, pale children, and the creeping suspicion that maybe her mother’s schizophrenia wasn’t schizophrenia after all.
Jackson, meanwhile, is your standard movie sibling with more charm than good sense. He’s up to his eyeballs in debt to local loan sharks and spends half the runtime making terrible choices with the confidence of a man who’s never read a horror script before. When the team gets invited to a remote countryside mansion by the unnervingly polite Mrs. Greene (Celia Imrie, bringing full “British grandmother who might eat you” energy), Angela senses danger. Jackson senses payday. Guess who wins that argument?
The mansion, of course, has a history. Fifteen years ago, several orphan girls were found dead there, their mouths sewn shut — which, incidentally, is also what most critics wished would happen to half the people in this film.
The Art of the Slow Burn (and the Fast Demise)
Malevolent takes its sweet time setting up the scares, and that’s part of its charm. The first half plays like a con artist drama with light supernatural seasoning. The second half, however, is a buffet of escalating horror. The sound design tightens, the lighting shrinks, and before long, you’re flinching at every creak of the house.
Unlike so many horror films that mistake chaos for suspense, this one gives its characters room to breathe before choking them — metaphorically and, later, literally. The shift from con job to cosmic justice is handled with surgical precision, until the movie suddenly goes full fever dream and reminds you why it’s horror in the first place.
By the time Mrs. Greene is revealed to be both unhinged and disturbingly handy with sewing tools, Malevolent transforms into a twisted morality play about truth, guilt, and keeping your mouth shut (again, literally).
Florence Pugh: The Patron Saint of Terrified Women
Florence Pugh had no business being this good in a straight-to-Netflix horror film. She approaches Angela — a character who could’ve been “generic horror girl #87” — with such empathy and subtlety that you forget you’re watching a movie about haunted orphans. Pugh turns panic into poetry, trauma into something tangible.
Even as the film veers toward the gruesome, she grounds it with a real sense of heartbreak. Angela’s terror isn’t just about ghosts — it’s about family curses, buried guilt, and the kind of anxiety you get from realizing your brother’s plan to scam a possible murderer might not end well.
If this movie had come out after Midsommar, critics would’ve called it “a fascinating early study of grief and female rage.” Since it came before, it’s more like “that horror movie Florence Pugh carried on her back while everyone else was still figuring out where the camera was.”
The Villains Are People Too (And That’s the Problem)
Ben Lloyd-Hughes plays Jackson with a reckless, punchable charm. He’s a man who thinks consequences are just rumors. His dynamic with Pugh is weirdly believable — they bicker like real siblings who’ve shared too many bad ideas. You spend most of the movie hoping Angela slaps him, which makes his eventual fate feel like karmic balance restored.
Then there’s Mrs. Greene, played by Celia Imrie, who brings a tea-sipping, apron-wearing malevolence that’s somehow scarier than any ghost. She’s the kind of character who calls you “dear” while planning to stitch your lips together. She’s every passive-aggressive British matron turned full-blown psychopath.
The real villain, though, is guilt. The Sayers family’s “gift” for seeing the dead is less supernatural ability and more hereditary doom. The film’s dark humor comes from watching these self-proclaimed ghost experts utterly out of their depth. It’s like watching a YouTube prank gone horribly right.
When the Screaming Starts
By the third act, Malevolent drops all pretense of restraint. People get mutilated, mouths are sewn shut, and reality collapses faster than Jackson’s moral compass. Yet, despite the carnage, the tone never feels exploitative. Olaf de Fleur directs violence like a magician revealing a trick — quick, efficient, and unsettlingly elegant.
The imagery of sewn mouths — a motif that could’ve been laughable in lesser hands — becomes genuinely horrifying. It’s a metaphor for silence, complicity, and the lies we tell ourselves to sleep at night. Also, it looks painful, which helps.
The ghosts themselves are beautifully understated: wide-eyed, pale, and perpetually screaming in the distance. There are no cheap jump scares or CGI specters flailing about — just atmosphere, suggestion, and the creeping dread that something unseen is watching.
Ghost Stories for People Who Don’t Believe in Ghosts
At its heart, Malevolent is a story about lies catching up to you — lies to others, lies to yourself, and lies told through a shaky EMF reader and a fog machine. The supernatural mayhem is just the punishment for pretending you can manipulate grief.
It’s funny, then, that this small, moody film about fake psychics manages to feel more authentic than half of Hollywood’s glossy ghost franchises. There’s humor in how doomed these con artists are, but it’s the kind of humor you find right before something goes terribly wrong.
Even the film’s bleak ending has a wicked irony. Angela, haunted and traumatized, insists to her grandfather that she’s “not alone.” Of course, she isn’t — not with the ghosts of her past (and possibly her brother) now permanent houseguests.
Netflix’s Hidden Gem of Doom
Malevolent slipped under the radar, probably because Netflix was busy recommending Bird Box to everyone’s grandmother that week. But it deserves a second look — it’s lean, hauntingly shot, and laced with dark humor sharper than Mrs. Greene’s sewing kit.
The script balances tragedy and terror with a wink. It’s a movie that takes itself seriously enough to work but still knows how ridiculous the premise is. You can practically hear the universe laughing as the scammers realize their con just got real.
Final Verdict: A Satisfyingly Spiteful Haunting
In a landscape filled with franchise fatigue and ghost stories on autopilot, Malevolent feels refreshingly old-school — small cast, big dread, and no mercy. Florence Pugh gives it heart, Celia Imrie gives it teeth, and the screenplay gives everyone just enough rope to hang themselves with poetic irony.
It’s not perfect, but it’s clever, chilling, and grimly funny — the kind of movie where justice is supernatural, karma carries a scalpel, and Florence Pugh once again reminds the world that she can elevate anything, even a haunted sewing kit.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stitched lips.
Because sometimes the dead don’t want you to speak — they just want you to admit they were right.
