Review of Wishmaster (1997) by James S — 06 Apr 2011

A line often levelled at films people would describe as "guilty pleasures" is that they're so bad, they're good. This is often not the case, these films are usually just terrible but Wishmaster is actually so bad that it becomes quite enjoyable in the long run.

Hailing from a similar time to Wes Craven's seminal 90's horror Scream, Wes is just on presenting duty here for a movie which has more in common with the fantastical elements of his 80's offerings such as Nightmare on Elm Street than his genre redefining classic. This is the one which has Robert Englund in it after all.

Here an evil genie seeks a way into the world so he can unleash all kinds of hell on Earth by granting wishes which give him power. It's up to a bunch of US soap opera stars to stop him.

Wishmaster looks naffably cheap which is part of it's grim charm. The film is soft focussed, the sets obviously cardboard and the gore painfully unreal. Yet it's the films ability to make you laugh at it which stops it from becoming a disaster. There's very much the feeling that it knows it's a cheap piece of crap so why not have fun and not take itself too seriously.

One of the most enjoyable elements of the movie is Andrew Divoff's maniacal genie. Divoff is excellent at playing the villain, he's just got one of those faces and he oozes a pantomime evil that is perfect for this film. His grin has Batman's Joker all over it.

In addition, fans of inventive movie deaths will get a kick out of some of the ways in which Divoff coerces his victims into wishing their way to some quite frightful demises. There's actually a few really good ones which shows that the writer must have had a talent for this sort of thing at least.

It's unlikely that Wishmaster would race to the top of anybody's greatest movies of all time lists but as cheap, tacky, low thrill, high enjoyment horror goes, it does something right, even if you won't want to admit it to yourself.