WISHMASTER

WISHMASTER turns the tables on the audience’s naïve presuppositions about benign genies and turns the wish-granting-being into a demon who exercises powers to hurt mankind with the ultimate goal of gaining complete domination.

The movie begins in 12th-century Persia where a mischievous monster, the Djinn (Andrew Divoff), livens up a king’s party by casting horrible spells on the terrified guests, who die in all sorts of gruesome and bloody ways. Evidently, the Djinn or Wishmaster (Andrew Divoff) is a member of an evil race created by God between angels and man. To stop the Djinn, the king’s wizard traps the Djinn inside an enchanted opal which is placed inside a statue of a Persian god.

Jump ahead to the present day. As the statue is being unloaded at a shipping dock, the intoxicated crane operator slips on the controls, and the statue comes crashing down, breaking over a man. The jewel is discovered by a worker who sells it to a pawn dealer, who in turn takes it to be valued at a gem research center. A young female gemologist, Alex (Tammy Lauren), is intrigued by the seemingly flawless rock.

Alex gives the opal to her boyfriend, Josh (Tony Crane), who unknowingly unleashes the Djinn via some sort of laser examination, resulting in an explosion. Josh is injured severely and asks the Djinn to relieve his pain. This wish inaugurates a reign of terror where the Djinn answers wishes by destruction and pain. The Djinn, in fact, relieves Josh’s pain by killing him.

Alex begins a quest to understand the jewel, the Djinn and his wicked powers, as the Djinn continues to wreak havoc on innocent people. Alex discovers that she is the one person who can stop the evil by asking the Djinn three wishes. She knows, however, that when she makes a final and third wish, she will forever free the Djinn and those like him to rule the earth. Of course, if she doesn’t finish with a third wish, then the Djinn will continue to claim more souls and create terror through destructive wish-granting.

Needless to say, this is a movie with a very limited audience and very few discriminating audience members would choose to go see it. It is filled with very sadistic blood, guts and gore. It has an occult worldview which presupposes that human logic and reasoning can defeat evil and incorrectly states that God created an evil race. In contrast, the Bible states that God is good and His creation was good, but his created beings can choose on their own to do evil. In this movie, the Djinn aspires to be God, or at least a god, which would make him a demon or devil – a fallen angel.

Stylistically and thematically, the movie has many errors. Alex is selected by the Djinn to say the three wishes, but it was in fact, Josh who released him from the opal. She gets unexplained premonitions about the evil the Djinn is doing. His evil is not defeated by an omnipotent, sovereign God, but by cunning and reason. Though the Djinn can only do his wicked deeds when someone bids him to act, he seemed to throw that rule away at the conclusion of the movie during a party during which all sorts of people who never spoke with the Djinn get killed.

Although Wes Craven’s name looms large in the advertising campaign, he serves merely as executive producer of this horror flick. The real auteur of “Wishmaster” is Robert Kurtzman, whose special effects credits include SPAWN and MARS ATTACKS!

Even so, Wes Craven has built an empire of horror by not only crafting movies with a psycho-killer, such as SCREAM, but also delving into the occult as seen in THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW. Ironically, Wes attended a Christian college. Perhaps, he is angry at God because his profanity-laden, violence-filled movies attack goodness and God. Please pray for Wes because he needs to discover the love of God and His forgiveness and turn away from his depraved ideas which hold a powerful attraction for many young people who seek the supernatural through false means.