Review of Wishmaster (1997) by Lord N — 17 Jul 2011

This is a redo. The more I thought about this film the worse it got.

Acting/Characters: I am a sucker for Robert Englund and I enjoyed him in the film. There were a lot of people in here from prominent horror films such as Kane Hodder who played Jason, Tony Todd who played Candyman, Angus Scrimm who played The Tall Man, ect. That was good. But boy were the characters ridiculously stupid. Irritatingly so actually. And by the time they got the starfish off of Angelina Jolie's face, her lips had swelled to twice their normal size. Jon Voight started laughing and that's why they never talk. If you read that last sentence, congrats, you actually read my reviews and I appreciate that. That aside, the Djinn and Robert Englund were the two best characters in the film. The Djinn was good because as a character, he realized how stupid everyone else was and he took advantage of that. Englund is always entertaining. The main character got smarter by the end but overall the acting was sub-par, and the character were stupid. 1.5/10.

Plot: Long story short a Djinn (evil Genie) is released from a gem and tricks people into making wishes so he gets their souls. It's not a hard thing for him to do really. The plot is mildly interesting and kept me focused on the movie. It wasn't too generic either which is always nice. I didn't shut it off out of boredom which is a plus (but I've only ever shut off 3 movies). I dunno, it was a fun film at times. 3/10.

Screenplay: Pretty much on par with the genre. It was the weakest element. Wes Craven (usually) gives us a good screenplay but here the title is a misnomer. He just produces it. It did nothing more than move the story along. Although, I don't understand why the last word of the Djinn's lines always had to be over-enunciated. It was like a cross between Davy Jones and Reverend Lovejoy. Kind of irritating really. 1.5/10.

Likableness: It wasn't so terrible. I enjoyed it for the most part but it wasn't very well made. It had some good special effects and they made the Djinn look pretty cool. But that's it for the most part. It wasn't anything more than that. Like I said before, you could do worse. You could do better. It was just "eeh" and that's it. 2/10.

Final Score: 8/40 42% (M).

TRIVIA TIME: 1. Characters named Finney, Beaumont, Derleth and Demerest are all references to science fiction or horror writers of the 1950s.

2. Many crew members, including director Robert Kurtzman (man killed by piano) had small roles in the film, some times appearing in different scenes as different characters.