WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Malevolent, streaming now on Netflix.
In Netflix's Malevolent, Angela (Florence Pugh) and her brother Jackson (Ben Lloyd-Hughes) lead a group of con artists pretending to be paranormal investigators, scamming people of their money by faking contact with dead loved ones. It's a pretty good con, too, at least until Angela begins to actually see ghosts.
When they're hired by Mrs. Green (Celia Imrie) to rid her home, a former orphanage, of the ghosts of three girls murdered there decades earlier, events take a drastic turn as Angela's visions intensify. As they peer deeper into the mystery, their ghost-busting racket unearths a long-buried secret related to the killings.
The Real Killer Unveiled
Malevolent is, essentially, The Sixth Sense meets Insidious, but with more of a mystery. Angela's boyfriend Elliot (Scott Chambers) falls through the floor as she tries to follow the ghosts in the house. She believes they're attempting to send her a message, which appears to be true when they discover that the room Elliot has fallen into is the secret prison the girls were held in years before. The four crew members finally decide they've had enough, compounded by an angry Mrs. Green discovering their ruse.
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After Angela and Jackson rescue Elliot, events take a darker turn as equipment manager Beth, Jackson's girlfriend, goes missing. Believing the killer has returned, Jackson goes after her, and eventually finds her in another room, bloodied and with her mouth sewn shut. But as they try to escape, Jackson -- now experiencing ghostly visions like his sister -- crashes their van.
Beth is killed in the accident, and a nearly unconscious Angela sees a mysterious man knock out Elliot out and take an injured Jackson back to the orphanage. When Angela tracks the man back to the house, she discovers he's Herman, Mrs. Green's son, who was tried for the murders of the girls. However, he's not the real killer. The person sewing Jackson's mouth shut and toying with him is none other than Mrs. Green.
Why Did Mrs. Green Have a Lust For Blood?
We realize just how much Malevolent is influenced by Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, as it's revealed Mrs. Green was always the brains behind the operation, and Herman was merely the muscle who enabled her wicked ways.
All the pieces of the puzzle fall into place due to clues dropped earlier on the film. In her youth, Mrs. Green was tortured by her mother, a cruel woman who mutilated her for no reason. That created a lifelong hatred within Mrs. Green for the adolescent girls she was tasked to care for, because she was jealous she never had the warmth and love they did.
That drove her mad as their caretaker, and so she used Herman to help her take out all her pent-up rage out on her foster kids. When she went too far, Herman took the fall. However, the dead girls refused to permit Mrs. Green to live out the rest of her life in peace.
Directed by Olaf de Fleur Johannesson, Malevolent stars Florence Pugh, Ben Lloyd-Hughes, Scott Chambers, Georgina Bevan, Niall Greigg Fulton and Celia Imrie. It's available now on Netflix.