Wishmaster

Right off the bat you’re greeted with a couple horror icons in Robert Englund and Ted Raimi, the Clint Howard of horror movies (Excluding the Ice Cream Man which is clearly a crappy 90’s horror movie prominently featuring Clint Howard in the titular role). Raimi takes one on the chin and meets an early demise unfortunately. But that set the tone real quick for how this movie was going to play out in my estimation. Honestly, my favorite thing about this movie was how much it felt like it represented the 90’s. There were so many great tropes and elements that brought me back to that era in every scene. From the costuming to even just the general demeanor of the extras in certain parts of the movie you just got this overwhelming rush of 1990’s energy jumping off the screen. The main antagonist, Alexandra, in her tennis match against a colleague who had been severely friend zoned was classic. The fact that she was a girls basketball coach for some reason fed into it. The cops. Literally everything the cops did just reeked of 90’s cops. The fact that later on in the movie you got an appearance by Tony Todd on top of everything else almost makes this movie iconic in a sense. The only real problem is that the movie itself is just not very good.

I do want to give one more kudos to this movie before we dig into the negatives. The practical effects on this movie were impressive. Many of them were cheesy 90’s special effects but the overall production value that came from specifically the sheer volume of how many gory and gruesome effects they employed in this movie was intimidating at times. I appreciate the dedication when in 1997 there was plenty of fledgling computer graphic abilities that many were leaning towards to achieve certain visual effects. And not that there weren’t any in this film, but they truly were limited. And it’s that opting to use the traditional methods for so many effects, even the really silly ones, that made this movie fun, even when it was a little cringey.

That is really where the problem lies with this movie. It’s kind of like they only auditioned people who couldn’t make it on Melrose Place for what was billed as a rejected Tales from the Crypt episode stretched into a feature length film. If you can grasp those 90’s qualities then you know why this movie suffers so greatly. The acting is just over the top all the time. Everything is hyper emotional and intense. Nobody picks a lane and stays in it. They are all over the place and things go bonkers at the drop of a hat. For every thing they did well, they ultimately shot themselves in the foot by packaging it in poorly delivered lines or the wrong kind of exposition. The fact that a cogent means to contain or destroy the Djinn didn’t come from the professor who filled in a LOT of the blanks for us but instead from Alexandra’s middle school coaching mantras is just ridiculous. When her tennis pal meets his demise early on and the scene is crawling with cops, she drives up to the lab he works at, runs past a number of seemingly capable officers and almost gets all the way to his bloody corpse on the ground before anyone even attempts to stop her. And then the Wishmaster himself. He was just a trip. I think he was supposed to be suave like some kind of ladies man but he looked like a creepy used car salesman and his voice was just off putting to say the least. Everything about this movie screams reboot with a much more capable hand in the 21st century.

If someone really was to take this franchise and reboot it today, I think it would benefit tremendously. Come up with a compelling origin story that makes sense. It doesn’t have to be complex but something that has some merit. It seems like you could get that down relatively easy. Find a means, even if it’s the same way, to bring the Djinn to modern times. There are plenty of movies in the modern era where an artifact is discovered and an ancient evil is unlocked. I think the most poignant way to do this story better is how the wishmaster regains his strength, by granting wishes. His approach could be far more methodical and less cheesy. Ultimately I think the writers could have a lot of fun juxtaposing bystanders wishes and how they are manipulated to cause death and mayhem instead of benefit to the wisher. That was one of the best parts of the film that many times felt like it fell flat. I want a million dollars, cut to that person’s mom signing up for voluntary insurance on a trip and the plane explodes. Its an interesting gimmick but a long way to go for little payout. I did really enjoy the sales girl who said she wanted to look beautiful forever so he turned her into a mannequin. That was a little creepy. It took the wish and turned it on it’s side in a very compelling kind of way. I feel like if you took that note from this series and made that a real focal point of good writing that you could have something very driven in this kind of film. Heck, even just a montage of the wishing demon “overhearing” people wishing for things in every day life and finding fun ways to make that backfire would be a great way to indulge and entertain the viewer more gratuitously in a remake.

At the end of the day I think I can feel good giving this movie a C-. I’m not sure if it’s ALL that different from a D+ except for the 90’s nostalgia paid off enough for me to say I had fun watching it. I think if that hadn’t been as solid, it might have been easier for this stinker to dip into that D grade territory. It’s also why I don’t feel like I need to really visit any of the sequels to this initial outing. I think once is probably enough. Going further down the rabbit trail does not feel like it’s going to yield greater results for me. But at the end of the day I had enough fun watching the movie that I was mildly entertained. There’s not a lot of redemptive qualities. I certainly don’t need to own it and I don’t think I’ll ever revisit this one. I’m also not necessarily inclined to recommend it, outside of that 90’s goodness. If you want a cheesy horror flick from the 90’s to scratch a VERY particular kind of itch in leaning heavily into some of those 90’s kind of acting tropes, you’d do well with this one. Outside of that, go ahead and pass and you’ll be fine. I think that’s about all we have to say about Wishmaster. So until our next time together kids, I’ll catch you on the flip side.