Wish Upon

What would you do if you came across a wish-grant­i­ng music box? Feed the hun­gry? Bring about world peace? ​“I wish my dad wouldn’t be so embar­rass­ing.” This is what 17-year-old Clare (Joey King) decides to wish for when she is gift­ed with this film’s elab­o­rate stand-in for the infa­mous Monkey’s Paw.

With each wish made, a friend is killed in per­pe­tu­ity. Even the greater good would require a painful amount of con­sid­er­a­tion at the cost of a loved one. Yet this sto­ry fol­lows the dumb, self-absorbed teen as she know­ing­ly opts for the school hunk to fall mad­ly in love with her at the expense of human life. And yes, this heads exact­ly where you expect it to.

Wish Upon offers a rinse and repeat for­mu­la as Clare makes a ter­ri­bly ego­cen­tric wish, an acquain­tance dies in a lack­lus­tre man­ner, she feels sort-of-bad, then does it all again any­way. In an attempt to make up for the lack of cre­ativ­i­ty, the film offers super­fi­cial dis­trac­tions by fak­ing out sub-par Final Des­ti­na­tion styled death sequences. On top of this, it con­sis­tent­ly breaks its own rules and jumps from super­nat­ur­al hor­ror to teen dra­ma seem­ing­ly at random.

At least the film has a crack at being fright­en­ing, bound­ing into dou­ble fig­ures when it comes to jump scares. Yet as the sto­ry rolls on, the excite­ment lev­els dimin­ish as the sound mix­er slips on the vol­ume button.

Although the mes­sage may be a valid one – how van­i­ty and self­ish­ness can be detri­men­tal to your life – the offen­sive lazi­ness of the whole enter­prise spits on those it imi­tates. It pro­vides no intrigue or grat­i­fi­ca­tion, even when the wish­es become mod­er­ate­ly inter­est­ing lat­er on.

Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er and occa­sion­al direc­tor John R Leonet­ti, respon­si­ble for The But­ter­fly Effect 2 and Annabelle, had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to make a fun, throw-away hor­ror flick. But his film hits rock bot­tom very early.