Florence Pugh is a great actress buy you'd be better off watching her in Lady Macbeth. This one was rather boring and unoriginal. I didn't find it particularly scary and instead of it being a creep ghost movie, it sorta turns into an annoying torture-fest by the end. Poorly developed characters and a lack of scares, along with lackluster atmosphere means I'll give it 5/10 stars. It would be lower but I gave it a bonus star just cuz I like Miss Pugh.
Malevolent did not capture my attention at all. Boring and old hat as they come, _Malevolent_ might have been worth my money, (because I watched it on a Netflix account that I don't pay for, so that money was zero) but it was not worth my time, or yours.
_Final rating:★½: - Boring/disappointing. Avoid where possible._
Bad watch, probably won't watch again, and can't recommend.
The movie description didn't do this justice: it makes it sound like a "Scooby Doo" episode that turns real, when it should have been closer to "Don't Breathe".
And that's where most of my contention comes in: the misdirection plot of needing money was completely unnecessary and a waste of time. Florence Pugh worked her ass off to carry the movie, and Celia Imrie does creepy old lady well enough, but I think the character was written badly and she just couldn't do anything with it.
The story itself, the actual events that are happening are fantastic, and I was shocked to see this as a 2020 movie. With proper production value, and a decent cast, this should have easily been a movie that people talked about.
While it's not quite "Girl Next Door" levels of traumatic, it's enough to easily make you feel bad for the ghosts, but I didn't give a crap about any of the protagonists: I just couldn't see why I should. A lot of the time I was mad they were even still doing ghost stuff because of all the friction in the first act.