Wish Upon is one of the worst horror movies of the year. Directed by John R. Leonetti, it stars Joey King, Ki Hong Lee and Ryan Phillppe. It’s simple story line, about a girl who finds a magical box which grants a wish to her, but every time her wish is fulfilled, someone close to her is murdered, could have made for a lean and mean story, but in this film, it is just dumb and funny. It could even have been good in the most ridiculous ways, like some terrible movies are, but because it treats the story very seriously, it ends up being dour and idiotic.
The script from Barbara Marshall does not have much logic, and can’t set up the rules about how the box exactly operates, and why a specific person is chosen to be murdered. The specific scenes that are meant to be terrifying are inaptly directed, or over directed with the shameless use of music, which creates the effect that the audience can predict that what is going to happen in the scene because the blaring and screeching has already made it quite clear.
Its important to note that while John R. Leonetti has worked with the horror master James Wan, he has not gleaned much in the way of creating an unsettling atmosphere that could at least make up for the unimaginative way the kill scenes are depicted. The acting is decent, but most of the characters are already written as cliches’, the main heroine is plucky and sad, which makes her perfect to fight the evil forces and the destiny. But she isn’t remotely interesting. The movie also copies the skeletal plot of the Final Destination, in which the characters are killed one by one, but if that franchise was effective and sometimes imaginative in murdering its protagonists, this movie is just lazy.
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