maleficent

In the early “Crow” from 1988, a half-dressed man touches the forehead of another man as if feeling for signs of fever as a black bird wings toward them like a maleficent angel.

In “Plymouth Point,” you and your friends must unravel a sprawling, maleficent conspiracy by summoning all your combined wits and the internet’s resources to crack passwords, solve riddles and search social media.

Mind you, his purpose is deadly serious: “to discover . . . the causes and beginnings of certain maleficent qualities in the American character,” as he puts it.

Then there’s the possibly eternal, surely maleficent, fountain producing black water that makes its drinkers lose all sense of identity and memory to basically become livestock.

“Publicly, they say the right things, expressing approval and joining in the chorus of voices that applaud the takedown of maleficent characters who prey on vulnerable women in the workplace,” she wrote.