Wishmaster
Be careful what you wish for
Wishmaster is an unwatchably bad disaster of a film and Wes Craven must have been really struggling financially when he allowed his name to be attached to it. This film (aka Wes Craven’s Wishmaster) is both uninspired and unoriginal and displays none of the humour which may have dragged it out of the bargin bins (although I doubt that anything could have saved this film from well deserved obscurity).
The premise of the film is explained via the sort of throaty voice over that has ‘cheap’ stamped all over it and is then underlined with an opening scene set in ancient Persia. This tells us that the film is going to be a Monkey’s Paw style take on the old Genie in the bottle stories and totally undermines the rest of the film.
Essentially, we have a Djinn, released into twentieth century America who needs to grant three wishes to the gemologist, Tammy Lauren (Alexandra Amberson) who awakens him and, indirectly, causes him to be released. Once all three wishes are granted he can release his bretheren and take over the world. He does this by wondering around granting wishes, in as twisted and vicious a way as he is able (You want to be rich, collect your mother’s life insurance), to anyone and everyone who gets in his way while simultaneously scaring Lauren enough to encourage her to go and find out what is causing her nightmares. But we’ve already had the entire premise of the film dumped on us, so there’s no tension and no surprises apart from the fact that this otherwise intelligent woman is so willing to accept that a 12th century Djinn is stalking her.
The special effects are reasonably gruesome in places, but never stomach-churning enough to put off a family audience. They’re not shocking and they’re not original… we even have aliens climbing out of people’s chests!
Wishmaster is a seriously dull film and one that I would have switched off after about twenty minutes if I hadn’t wanted to comment on it here. The only positive thing in the entire sorry mess is Andrew Divoff’s creepy grin when playing the Djinn in it’s human disguise.
The only frightening thing about this movie was when I looked it up on the Internet Movie Database and discovered that there are three sequels.
Saturday 30 Dec 2000 | Paul Pritchard | Horror
Your views on this movie, though they are your right, are very skewed. Personal experience with this movie, I enjoyed it.