Main cast: Tammy Lauren (Alexandra Amberson), Andrew Divoff (The Djinn), Chris Lemmon (Nick Merritt), Wendy Benson (Shannon Amberson), Tony Crane (Josh Aickman), Jenny O’Hara (Wendy Derleth), Kane Hodder (Merritt’s Guard), Tony Todd (Johnny Valentine), and Robert Englund (Raymond Beaumont)
Director: Robert Kurtzman
Wishmaster is the 1997 horror gem that critics collectively decided to hate when it first came out, because apparently horror movies don’t count as “real cinema” unless someone’s crying in French. But for the rest of us with functioning taste buds and a love of delightfully gruesome chaos, this is pure cult gold.
At the center of the carnage is the Djinn — yes, simply the Djinn, because why give an ancient evil a boring name when you can just let pure malevolence speak for itself?
His job is to grant three wishes.
The catch is that he’s basically a demonic lawyer who reads the fine print you didn’t know existed. Granting wishes “nicely” won’t free him and his murderous buddies trapped in some hellish dimension. So naturally, he opts for maximum horror.
Think of it as the ultimate cosmic slapstick: a cop wishes for evidence, and the criminal immediately goes full Grand Theft Auto in the police station, turning “protect and serve” into “duck and preserve your skull”. Fun times.
Enter Alexandra Amberson, our unsuspecting heroine, who accidentally becomes the keeper of the cursed fire opal that the Djinn is trapped in. Touch it first, and congratulations, she now gets to endure every grisly wish-fueled catastrophe in the Djinn’s path as he starts to track her down while granting wishes to all in his path. She didn’t sign up for this, but neither did anyone who accepted a “free trial” that turned into a subscription to Hell Monthly.
The plot is thinner than the Djinn’s moral compass and probably collapses if you look at it too closely. But who cares? The real joy here is the unrelenting creativity of the kills.
From clever gore to laughably fiendish deaths, Wishmaster delivers with the gleeful abandon of a villainous kid in a candy store. And speaking of villains, Andrew Divoff as the Djinn deserves a standing ovation: he’s so charming, suave, and inexplicably sexy that you’d almost consider letting him murder you— almost —like a red flag you’d swipe right on at 2 AM.
The pacing is snappy, the humor lands without derailing the horror, and the movie cheekily winks at fans with cameos from genre legends. It’s a movie aware of its own ridiculousness, leaning into it with all the confidence of a demonic showman on opening night.
In short, Wishmaster is a must-watch for anyone who enjoys horror that laughs while it maims, thrills while it spills blood, and proves that a film can be both fiendishly clever and unapologetically over the top. Three wishes? More like ninety minutes of weaponized monkey’s paw energy that’ll make you never want to blow out birthday candles again.
