Franchise Review: Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Hell (2001)

 

I'm inclined to take back every bad thing I said about the previous two Wishmaster films. This third installment, Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Hell, changes things up a lot from what 1 and 2 established of the series and made it about ten times more boring and way less fun.

College student Diana Collins becomes the waker of the Djinn demon (why is the waker always a woman?) when she opens an artifact from Iran that holds the Stone of Secret Fire. The Djinn takes on the identity of Diana's professor and goes about killing and threatening her friends to force her to make her three wishes. Diana enlists the help of the archangel Michael, whose spirit takes over the body of her boyfriend Greg, to defeat the Djinn and save the world.

So they changed the story again for the third sequel, but they sort of revert it back to the simplicity of the first film. Thankfully, there's not as much time wasted on backstory, and actually more time spent on the main character, Diana, played by adorable AJ Cook. The movie becomes less about the Djinn and the horrible chaos he can create, and more about how Diana finds her inner strength to stop him. Or whatever. They give her some backstory about how she thinks she's responsible for the death of her parents in a car accident - but I honestly don't see how that relates to the story by the end. When the angel Michael is invoked, he brings with him the Sword of Justice (is that from a comic book or something?). Diana cannot hold the sword, which will kill the Djinn, until she is ready to sacrifice herself to save the world.

This element of the story didn't really bother me - what bothered me is that it came out of nowhere. One minute Diana and Greg are running from the Djinn, ending up in a church, and the next minute Diana is using her second wish to bring Michael. Whuh? Where did that come from? This story has never had a religious angle at all, and none of the research Diana does has her looking for religious help. So I'm not totally convinced on that plot point. The execution of Michael possessing Greg (although that's probably the wrong word) actually works well and doesn't come off as cheesy - I know, surprising, right?

This is a Wishmaster movie, so I was hoping that at least there would be some cool and gruesome wishes to look forward to. Not so much. Not so much at all. The only wish that is even remotely worth talking about is the girl who wants to lose weight and just sort of pukes up blood and fat and her stomach. Other than that, there's just some fire, an impaling, eaten by rats, and a heart that explodes - but they do that one the easy way by just showing a view of the heart from inside exploding, instead of doing a practical effect on the actress. And that's really all there is to talk about. So sad.

Everything about the Djinn is wrong in this movie. First, the look. The basic creature is still fairly the same as previous films but some subtle changes throw everything off for me. His color is a drab gray. The horn-like tendril things coming out of the top of his head are more prominent, and hang down loosely in a way that resembles a little girl's pigtails. His ears are still pretty big, but they must have made his head smaller in comparison because now they are all you look at when he's on screen. They are so ridiculous and distracting.

Secondly, the Djinn's voice is horrible. This is where I seriously miss Andrew Divoff, replaced as the Djinn by John Novak. Novak may be an actor and a voice actor, but his voice is so unbelievably wrong for the Djinn that I was actually quite taken aback when he first spoke. He doesn't sound remotely scary or as a demon with any kind of authority with a voice that is not even the usual deep, gravelly voice of a villain. Instead, his voice has a weird comical pitch which they try to make sound scarier by adding a reverb effect. It doesn't work. I cringed every time the Djinn opened his mouth and was happy that he used the professor's body and therefore his voice for most of the film.

Final verdict is that Wishmaster 3 blows. The biggest problem is that the tone of the film is way too serious. The overall sense of fun, the macabre joy that the Djinn had in what he did - it's all completely gone. I was bored and disappointed while watching it, not being able to laugh at anything that was happening. Only one more Wishmaster film to go. I don't have a good feeling.