The World of Horror

Wishmaster – Reviewed by Phantom

Starring: Tammy Lauren, Andrew Divoff, Robert Englund.
Running Time:  90 Minutes
Year: 1997

Wishmaster is a horror film that was released in 1997, it was directed by Robert Kurtzman who went on to direct the underwhelming slasher film Buried Alive in 2007, it was scripted by Peter Atkins writer of Hellraisers 2, 3 and 4 and to top it all off it was produced by Wes Craven himself.

As Angus Scrimm tells us in the introduction, Wishmaster focuses on a Djinn who can release an army of djinns so long as he is awakened and the person who awoke him grants three wishes, the first part of the film is set in the past with the Djinn in question trying to take control of the world by getting the person who awoke him (in this case a sultan?) to make just one more wish but, as per usual, somebody stops him and sends him back to whence he came, to a ruby where he is in imprisoned for all eternity.

You have to give credit to this film for doing something which few horror films actually do, going for a mythological creature that hasn’t been overused in the genre, unlike zombies, werewolves and vampires. But, aside from this if you want to look at the film in a critically correct manner there’s little to praise it for but if you want to look at it from a critically incorrect manner then there is all the more fun to be had and that is exactly what I will be doing here because there are films such as this that don’t really deserved to be hacked to pieces for having imperfect craftsmanship, some just deserve to be enjoyed and in all fairness there’s a reason why cult films exist.

The real star of the film is the Djinn with his bizarre eccentricities, especially his manner of speech which is one of the strangest things I have seen in a horror film, he likes to say wishezzzzzz in a raspy manner essentially he’s a more over the top Horrors from the Goosebumps storyline One Day at Horrorland in terms of speech that is.

There’s also a resemblance to Hellraiser and the Djinn is uncannily like Pinhead from the franchise especially with some of the dialogue and some of the one liners that he spews to his victims, but to be fair it isn’t all that surprising considering who wrote the film, a lot of Hellraiser fans will be able to find a lot of different links with Hell on Earth as well.

Upon observation you could come to the conclusion that the whole film seems to have been created just to show off some impressive and inventive visual effects and gore, like a certain Saw franchise had us all start believing three films in the franchise’s run, and these are truly some of the best moments of Wishmaster.

There are familiar faces galore here; Kane Hodder, Robert Englund and even Tony Todd. They don’t play essential roles (except maybe Englund’s character) but having them a part of a film such as this just helps to make it more enjoyable for horror fans.

One of the film’s biggest drawbacks is the dialogue which is as one dimensional as ever but this only really applies to Tammy Lauren’s Alexandra who isn’t so much a final girl as much as a nuisance and really tiresome to watch her “acting”. Luckily the Djinn is a lot of fun so the enjoyment there wipes away a lot of the pain Lauren’s acting brings.

Wishmaster was clearly the inspiration for the 2002 British horror film Long Time Dead which also used a Djinn as its antagonist although, in this film you don’t actually see the Djinn it’s more of an invisible force and the film does play out more like a typical teenage slasher film but the fact that Wishmaster did manage to get no less than three sequels and inspire films like Long Time Dead shows that it had some impact on the genre.

8/10