Movie Reviews

In Mall we follow Malcolm, a dude who’s had enough and heads for the mall with his meth pipe and a bag full of guns and self-made bomb. Instead of solely focusing on him, director Joe Hahn (the beat maker of Linkin Park) also focuses on five suburbanites at the mall and the way they handle the events.

As soon as the opening credits started, I found myself thinking that someone should’ve told Hahn he was making a movie here and not a video clip. Aiming for flashy, he ends up with something that looks cheap and kind of annoying. If it was just the opening credits, I would’ve been fine but unfortunately things don’t exactly improve from there on.

One of the five people hanging out at the mall is Jeff (Cameron Monaghan), a rebellious teenager obsessed with Herman Hesse’s novel Steppenwolf. His lines are meant to sound really deep but instead sound like something someone once heard and thought gee, this really sounds interesting. After about two minutes I was hoping Jeff was the first guy to catch a bullet.

The other suburbanites include a businessman played by Vincent D’Onofrio who likes to get his kicks from watching women in dressing rooms, a housewife played by Gina Gershon who is looking for attention from other men at the mall because her husband is ignoring her and Jeff’s friends along with his crush.

I’m pretty sure the idea is not to root for Malcolm here but that’s exactly what I found myself doing. Just get it over with and preferably in under twenty minutes. Sure, we can wax philosophically about this movie… like, is Mal real or is he a manifestation of Jeff’s hostility? But hey, we have better things to do and I already wasted 90 minutes on this piece of shit.