Franchise Review: Wishmaster 4: The Prophecy Fulfilled (2003)

 

Here we are at the end of the Wishmaster series. It began with a movie that was pretty good but not great, went into a slight decline with the second one, got uber-boring with the third one, and now here we are with the fourth one, which completely and utterly ruins the whole series with its stupidity.

Lisa and her boyfriend Sam are at first a happy couple moving into their first house, until a motorcycle accident leaves Sam in a wheelchair. With their relationship strained, Lisa grows closer to the lawyer in their case, Steven, who ends up giving her a gift that holds the Stone of Secret Fire. Lisa has awakened the Djinn (again - why is it always a woman?) without knowing it, and he takes on the identity of Steven to coax the three wishes out of her.

The biggest reaction I have to Wishmaster 4 is WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY THINKING? Once again, they've taken a series with a pretty cool villain and completely squandered all of its potential to be gory good fun. I don't even really know what to say about this bomb that was so lazy with its writing that it couldn't even get the opening text about the Djinn correct. Just watch the first movie - you know, the way, way, way better one? - and copy it! Not that hard. But that doesn't even hold a candle to the overall point of Wishmaster 4, which is the Djinn... discovering human love. Kill me now.

I was worried at the beginning of the movie when there was boobs and a somewhat graphic sex scene only three minutes in, but this is not that kind of movie. You soon realize that you almost want it to be that kind of movie when finally, after three movies, the third wish is made and the Djinn actually doesn't grant it in order to fulfill the prophecy, as the movie's subtitle falsely promises the audience. Lisa wishes that she could love him - that is Steven - for who he really is, and that confuses the Djinn because of some crap about how human love has to be given freely. So then the movie becomes about the Djinn trying to make Lisa fall in love with him. That is one place that I never thought this story would go. I never wanted this story to go there. I never thought the writers would be so stupid as to make a movie about a wish-granting genie demon falling in love with a human. So stupid. So very, very stupid.

The acting is surprisingly good from the three mains of Lisa, Sam, and Steven. The only one I recognized was Michael Trucco as Steven because of a guest role he had on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit as a rapist - so I was already in the mind to see his character as a villain. Lisa is a nice, strong female character who is tough but still able to love Sam. She does contribute to her own relationship problems by spending so much time with Steven, but I can't really blame her based on how douchey Sam is to her pretty much every second of the day. Gosh, it sounds so tedious talking about relationship, lovey-dovey stuff in a fucking Wishmaster movie. This is horrible!

An added element to the Wishmaster story is the Hunter, who comes to earth to kill Lisa the waker before the third wish can be granted. So he's sort of a good guy because he has the power to stop the Djinns from taking over the world, but he's also a bad guy because he wants to kill Lisa (and because he kills that poor woman at Lisa's work - how rude). They hired what looks like a Calvin Klein model to play the Hunter because he has pretty hair and looks sexy with a sword. He and the Djinn have a pretty hilariously bad fight scene in the woods where many ludicrous lines of dialogue are thrown at each other in between bitchy throws and punches. The Hunter is killed in this fight, so his whole appearance in the movie was completely useless, except as a time-filler.

The Djinn is again played by John Novak, so again, he sucks. He still has the stupid voice and still has the pigtails, and they made his look even worse this time by giving him a red skirt to wear. The "wishes" he grants? Lame. There is only one semi-good gory scene: when he makes the lawyer mutilate himself by pulling out his tongue and cutting off his nose. The effects of the other Djinns arriving in a fiery background is so cheap looking that it is laughable. A low budget does not help a Wishmaster movie at all.

At the end of Wishmaster 4, I could not turn my TV off fast enough. This is a truly pointless sequel that does nothing to help a series that was already pretty well in the shitter. I gave the series a very fair chance, and all it did was let me down a little bit more with each installment. With this final film, I am beyond disappointed and almost a little angry at how bad they fucked all this up. So long, Wishmaster, I don't think I'll be seeing any of you again any time soon.

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.

Franchise Review: Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies (1999)

 

Well, despite any warnings you fine people tried to give me about the suckiness of the Wishmaster sequels, I have decided to forage ahead nonetheless. Glutton for punishment, that is me. Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies wasn't entirely that painful but I was still pretty disappointed with it. It doesn't even feel like a sequel at all - it's kinda like Return of the Living Dead 2 in that it is basically the same movie and not improved upon in any way.

When thieves break into an art gallery and damage the statue of Ahura Mazda, the evil Djinn is once again released on the world. As he goes about his business granting wishes and collecting souls, the person who awoke him, a young woman named Morgana, tries to learn as much as she can about her foe before he forces her to make her three wishes.

If you've seen the first Wishmaster and you start feeling a sense of deja vu while watching Wishmaster 2, it's because they are basically the same movie. Minor changes, or maybe enhancements, are made to certain elements of the story, but it's still the same story wrapped inside the same story structure. Djinn is released, Djinn grants wishes to random people and gross stuff happens, female protagonist has hallucinations and dreams about the Djinn until their final "battle" where her last wish sends him back. It happened in the first one and it happened in the second one... makes me really hope that they have something different in store for me with the third one.

As the titular Djinn wishmaster, Andrew Divoff returns to give the audience another performance full of odd smiles and speech patterns. I almost doubt that that is even Divoff's real voice because it sounds so strange and detached from his body. Maybe that's just me. Divoff also has a great evil, creepy smile that I loved in the first Wishmaster. However in Wishmaster 2, that freaking smile never, ever leaves his face and it actually got really annoying. Holly Fields is Morgana, our semi-punky rebel girl with a good heart and head. Other than that she's quite a bore with no personality. The same goes for her priest friend Gregory, who probably should be more integral in the defeat of the Djinn but he's really not at all. His character just ends up being kinda there. The two kung-fu fighting prisoners are more interesting than this guy.

The wishes this time around are again partly satisfying on a bloody level, and partly lame. The lamest wishes are a cop that freezes to death (because he said, "Freeze!" to the Djinn - how is that a wish?) and the Russian crime boss who wants the head of his enemy - so he ends up literally having his head instead of his own. Some of the better ones include the guy whose body squishes through the bars of a jail cell and whatever the hell it was that happened to the guy whose insides sort of exploded out of his body. Really not sure what happened there, but it was bloody and gross so I liked it. While the Djinn is collecting souls in a prison, one inmate (Robert LaSardo - great niche actor) wishes that his lawyer would go fuck himself. All I could think was, "OMG PLEASE DO THIS, I HAVE TO SEE WHAT THIS LOOKS LIKE." It's not nearly as bad as what you might be thinking, but it's still hilarious to watch. Also hilarious is the scene at the casino, where a roulette wheel and playing cards are used as rolling and flying dangers in yet another massive chaos sequence like those in the first film.

The part of the story that was changed or added to was the exact number of souls the Djinn needed to gather - 1,001. Whew. He craftily gets this accomplished in what seems like only a number of days, though, so good on him. Morgana is also able to defeat the Djinn not only through a cleverly chosen wish, but also because she is now one "pure of heart." She trades her bare midriff shirts for a modest flowery dress and takes out her nose ring - but can someone explain to me what cutting off part of her pinkie finger did or where this idea even came from? What was most annoying about the story was how long they spent re-explaining who the Djinn was and all the history that was already established in the first film. A little explanation is needed to keep new viewers up to speed, but you really don't need to stretch it out over the course of the whole film almost.

All in all, Wishmaster 2 is just a fair sequel. I thought for sure that this one would be much bloodier and crazier than the first, but alas, I was disappointed. Even though I'm probably still going to watch them out of curiosity, I can't believe they still went ahead and made two more movies from this. Fingers crossed that something good happens in one of them.

Franchise Review: Wishmaster (1997)

 

I guess just because a horror film spawned a few sequels doesn't mean that the original was actually good enough to warrant sequels in the first place. This is very true of 1997's Wishmaster, which I had really high hopes for because of the talent involved, both in front of and behind the camera. However, despite some noteworthy gags, the whole of Wishmaster is pretty dull.

Alexandra, an appraiser at an auction, accidentally awakens the ancient Djinn from the jewel in which it was imprisoned. The Djinn grants wishes in order to collect human souls and become more powerful, but needs the three wishes of the person that awoke him - Alex - to open the gateway between worlds and free the rest of the Djinn to take over the Earth.

The movie was directed by Robert Kurtzman, one-third of the amazing KNB Effects house, so I knew before the movie started that at least the effects were going to be awesome. And indeed the opening scene in ancient Persia where the Djinn mutilates various people is freaking amazing. How could any horror fan not love the part where the guy's skin rips off and his skeleton comes out and attacks people? Sadly, that's probably the coolest thing to see in the whole movie and things pretty much go downhill from there.

Wishmaster's problem is that it has a great beginning and a pretty good ending, but everything in the middle is boring. Too much time is spent on exposition about the Djinn's history when we already got the basics on that from the text before the credits. There's a decent leading lady in Tammy Lauren as Alex (though she's mostly kind of whiny and weepy) who smartly deals with the cunning Djinn, but the interaction between the two characters is so little that there is never any real tension or fear that she is in danger. Once the Djinn explodes out of the opal gemstone as a mushy little baby Djinn and kills Alex's friend Josh, he just sort of walks around town disguised as some random guy and grants stupid little wishes to random people. Had Wishmaster stuck with the tone of the gruesome opening, I think it could have been much better.

Aside from the skeleton gag, there were actually a few other gore scenes that I enjoyed for the moment. Wishmaster takes most of its storytelling cues from The Monkey's Paw, wherein the wishes that are granted don't necessarily happen the way the wishers wanted them to. Some of the results are lame - a woman who says she wants to stay beautiful forever is turned into a mannequin - and some are pretty cool - the massacre at the police station where one guy gets his jaw ripped off. The two second-best gags happen at the end during a party where, again, all hell breaks loose. One party-goer is decapitated by piano wire with a life of its own; a woman turns into glass and explodes; statue snakes come alive and bite a man's face and twist it around all nasty-like; and another guy gets his face all stretched out weird by a spear going through his mouth.

The film can at least boast that it has an impressive cast of actors and horror icons, even if they just make cameo appearances. Robert Englund has the most starring role as Raymond Beaumont, the man who buys the statue where the jewel that holds the Djinn is trapped, and his assistant who bites it right off the bat is a personal favorite of mine, adorable little Ted Raimi. Tony Todd makes a short appearance as doorman Johnny Valentine, and Kane Hodder is a security guard who meets a very strange demise. Kurtzman himself appears as the man attacked by piano wire, and I think that was Howard Berger getting his face smashed in by a mace. The cameos are nice and bring a smile to the horror-lover's face when you see them, but they are not good enough to make the movie any better.

I actually want to watch the sequels to see if they get any nastier than this one, but I don't have much hope. It seems like there is probably a reason why I don't hear the Wishmaster series talked about more often - it's not that great. The Djinn as a villain is a very cool idea and had great potential but this film does not take advantage of that.