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The Appropriate Tune - "Wishmaster" by Nightwish
As any student of Arabic folklore or garden variety nerd will tell you, there is more to the genie than Disney songs and pop culture references. Genies, or jinn for those of you out there that aren’t filthy casuals, was the catch-all term for the transcendental beings that made up part of the belief system of the Arabic people almost three thousand years ago. Aside from their magical powers jinn were said to be not that much different than humans, they were mortal and they ate and slept as humans do, and they were not inherently good or evil and thus could choose to be either, which made it quite easy to integrate them into the theology of Islam as it made its through the Middle East, and on the surface seems a lot more tolerant than the ‘all your shit is Satan’ policies of Christian missionaries. Good jinn were those that chose to follow Allah and the bad ones didn’t, and many a tome written by many an Islamic wizard on the methods one could summon or entrap these mystical beings to either punish them for their wicked deeds or do the bidding of mankind. That’s likely where the whole ‘wishes’ thing got its start, but this is just an introductory paragraph to a movie review, so if you want to learn more I’d suggest visiting your local library.
Honestly it’s a bit weird that there haven’t been more evil jinn movies, I mean we’ve got two dozen movies about killer bongs and possessed cookies, you’d think a creature with established powers and versatility would come up more often. Hell they even made an evil leprechaun movie, and those guys literally do nothing but fix your shoes and give you free gold. In this post-Aladdin world the people were crying out for a genie-themed horror movie, and when you wish hard enough for something it might just come true. Or at least it seems like it does in hindsight.
Released in 1997, Wishmaster was written by Peter Atkins, directed by Robert Kurtzman, and produced by the late Wes Craven through Pierre David. In an introduction by Phantasm’s very own Angus Scrimm, the nature of the Djinn are revealed to us; That they are beings of great power and great evil who tempt mortals with anything their hearts desire, but should they grant three wishes to the person who wakes them then the barrier between worlds will be ripped asunder and the Djinn will be free to run rampant across the Earth. Such an event almost happened in 12th century Persia, but before the Djinn (Andrew Divoff) could grant the final wish he was sealed into a red jewel by a wizard. That jewel was hidden with a statue and that was the end of it until the present day, when the statue was broken during transport to an American museum and the jewel was discovered and subsequently stolen. Eventually this jewel ends up in the hands of an appraiser named Alex (Tammy Lauren), and it’s she who unknowingly frees the djinn from his prison, because apparently no one thought to rub the jewel before that. Now the Djinn has been set loose in the city, cutting a swath through the wishful masses, as he hunts down the woman who will bring about the apocalypse. Tonight Alex is going to learn that wishes do come true, whether she likes it or not. A shitty synopsis, true, but at least it’s accurate.
I’ve always been a bit wary when it comes to things throwing the names of popular creative types in the title as it always feels like a ploy in order to squeeze out some more bucks at the box office, but thankfully for the audience that’s not the case for Wishmaster. Wes Craven was coming off of the most successful film of his entire career in 1996’s Scream, earning 173 million dollars over a 14 million dollar budget, so it’s likely he was chomping at the bit to capitalize on that newfound industry clout. Part of that was jumping on the franchise wagon with Scream as he had with A Nightmare on Elm Street a decade or so prior, but it also meant that he could take more expensive risks than he could have otherwise. That’s what I think Wishmaster was for better or worse, more the film that Wes Craven wanted to make rather than the film he had to make.
We can see this right away in the choice of Robert Kurtzman for director. Looking at his film credits you can see that this was only the second film he had ever directed, but he had been a staple of the make-up and special effects department for the past decade, working behind the scenes on Marathon alumni like Night of the Creeps, Bride of Re-Animator, In the Mouth of Madness and dozens of others. So it’s no surprise that when given the keys to the camera and the OK by Wes Craven that he shows off what made him such an asset for all these years. You ever wondered what a skeleton ripping its way out of a human body looked like? Or a man getting his lower jaw ripped off? There are no papercuts in the world of Wishmaster, if you are around anything that might injure you then your family is gonna be requesting a closed casket funeral. In the review of Rise of the Planet of the Apes I wrote that that film could not exist without CGI, and while that’s not the case with Wishmaster (there are several scenes which utilize it after all), I don’t think it would be nearly as entertaining as it would be without the practical effects. The fact that it’s so over-the-top while being handmade is part of the macabre charm.
Speaking of handmade, I also have to give credit to Kurtzman and crew for the design of the Djinn, both its smaller, ‘larval’ stage and the larger main body. While it does come across as less of a being of Middle Eastern folklore and more of a Power Rangers villain, they tend to downplay the potential goofiness of the suit in favor of the face make-up, which by contrast looks quite detailed with losing much in the way of expressiveness. When they introduce the Djinn’s human form, which is just Andrew Divoff in a suit, for a second I didn’t realize they were the same person as the make-up was that transformative. Wishmaster as a series might not be up there with the major horror franchises but I wouldn’t put that blame on the Djinn, he looks way cooler than Freddy Krueger and his beef jerky face.
The second thing we can see right away is in the choice of casting, full of more cameos than a horror movie convention. Angus Scrimm (Phantasm), Robert Englund (Nightmare on Elm Street), Kane Hodder (Friday the 13th), Tony Todd (Candyman), Buck Flower (Village of the Damned and over a hundred other things), even good ol’ Ted Raimi shows up for a minute or two to die a gruesome death, it’s a treat for those followers of genre though likely meaningless for everyone else. Andrew Divoff as smooth Nathaniel Demerest or the demonic Djinn is a solid performance, and his bizarrely deep, toad croak of a voice helps him stand out in the sea of mostly silent movie monsters. Tammy Lauren immediately gave me Linda Hamilton vibes when I first saw her, beauty with the baggage of tough living, the kind of person who looks made for cigarettes and sarcastic quips. Which they lean into a bit here but not as often as I would’ve liked, instead giving us a lot of overhead shots of her grimacing, which on the whole was not an attractive look for her.
The third thing we can see right away is grabbing Henry Manfredini to compose the score. Manfredini, much like Kurtzman, is a staple of the horror movie genre, having composed the music for the entire Friday the 13th series as well as House (not the Japanese film) and various other horror films. I haven’t watched House or the Friday the 13th films beyond the first film so I don’t know if Manfredini has a distinct style, but if I had to describe his work in Wishmaster in three words or less it’d probably be ‘big and brassy’. The kind of bracing sound that would go well against the backdrop of Luke Skywalker racing a landspeeder on the moon of Endor, but not necessarily an evil genie murdering people. At times it’s so excited with itself that it actually hurts the mood the movie is trying to build; The way the music blares at jumpscares (of which there are more than necessary) ends up feeling like a skit pulled out of the Scary Movie series rather than from a legitimate horror film. A modern film would have doubled down on the Persian and Arabic music and probably end up sounding a rehashing of the Pillar Men theme though, so I appreciate Manfredini’s John Williams tribute boldness in a weird way.
All of that adds up to form my overall opinion of Wishmaster, that it is two-thirds of a good horror movie. It’s got a good idea, and it does cool things with special effects, but the plot isn’t there. There’s a core of a good story, with Alex struggling with her past trauma and learning to open up emotionally, but most of the runtime is spent on redoing the same scene over and over again: djinn tempts person with thing, djinn grants person said thing monkey-paw style, Alex has vision and grimaces, rinse and repeat. We don’t even get to the whole ‘three wishes’ aspect until near the end, because so much of the film is waiting for the Djinn and Alex to finally meet, and by the time they do the film just rushes through them, in hindsight making those threads they set up for her character which would be perfect inroads for the Djinn to tempt her, just feel rather superfluous. Most of the deaths leading up to the climax aren’t connected to her or anything that she does either, in fact they’re largely pointless as the Djinn ultimately gains nothing from granting any wishes besides the three for Alex, so there’s a definite dissonance between the horror and the narrative.
Furthermore, the whole concept of djinn in the film doesn’t seem to have been fully fleshed out before pen was brought to paper. You’re trying to tell that the Djinn, who have been around since the dawn of mankind, have never been to make a single person make three wishes? Also what exactly constitutes a wish in this universe? The rules of the Djinn in this film state that they can only use their powers in service to a wish, but I think you hear the words ‘I wish’ once in this entire film. You could argue that characters mentioning that they want a certain thing counts as a wish and I might accept that, but at one point the Djinn counts a guy saying yes to a question that the Djinn asked as a wish, so how vague can you get before what you say doesn’t count as a wish? All it does is make the Djinn in this movie look stupid as hell, as they have all these advantages and loopholes to their one rule that prevents them from complete world domination and yet they insist on twisting wishes to do evil shit rather than just giving people what they want and thus making them more inclined to actually make the wishes. When the Graboids from Tremors come across as the more intelligent and competent threat then you’re doing something wrong.
When compared to the horror movies of years past, your Halloween’s, your Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s, your Nightmare on Elm Street’s, Wishmaster struggles to find the right balance between thrills and story and in the end never quite finds it. That being said the special effects really are impressive for the time, and in a genre where visuals are of equal or greater importance to story that means Wishmaster gets the recommendation. If you’re looking for something to throw on the TV for your family/friends this Halloween, something that sparks conversation but doesn’t require your complete attention, you might want to consider Wishmaster. Pair it up with Leprechaun and Stargate and you can have your own ‘Americans screwing around with other people’s folklore’ night.
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