synopsis : melissa , a mentally-disturbed woman who likes to smoke , seduces doug , a minor-league baseball player who likes to study anatomy , work on motorcycles , and make out with his girlfriend in a public library . 
when doug decides to stop seeing her , melissa maliciously takes revenge on those around him , including his girlfriend , his mother , and his cat . 
comments : malicious , i suppose , is an acceptable moview for what it is : a cheap , b-movie thriller which rips off dozens and dozens of spurned-psycho-lover-who-wants-revenge films ( like fatal attraction , hand that rocks the cradle , etc . etc . ) that have come before it . 
malicious , however , really doesn't provide very many particularly suspenseful moments . 
the plot starts off energetically enough , the main characters are introduced and the affair between doug and melissa begins and ends pretty early on in the film . 
it starts to drag , unfortunately , after this . 
melissa will obviously try to take her revenge on doug ( as always seems to happen in movies like these ) , but she does so in unimaginative ways that have been done in other , better thrillers before . 
she drugs someone . 
she kills a family pet and leaves it in the girlfriend's apartment . 
and , of course , she stalks , so we see a number of shots , which are supposed to be suspenseful , where she's spying on doug and his girlfriend . 
i won't reveal the ludicrous ending to this turkey , but i warn you that it's both painfully obvious and a real yawner . 
john vernon does a remarkably good job at playing the not-so-bright baseball jock who initially gets swept away by melissa ( one of the script's faults is to try to pass off a character like this as a pre-med student ) . 
the same cannot be said , though , for molly ringwald . 
at times , she can effectively pull off the obsessed lover routine , especially during her silent , i'm-going-to-stare-you-down scenes . 
at other times , however , she just seems somehow goofy and out of place . 
in one particular scene which i guess was supposed to be suspenseful , she screeches " f--k you , you b-----d " and throws a phone . 
she delivers the line so ridiculously that one can't help but laugh . 
malicious certainly isn't the worst thriller of its kind out in the video racks ( a number of really fat turkies in this genre are out there ) , but it isn't all that good or original either . 
feel free to treat this film maliciously , watch something else .