Wish Upon Summary & Review
No matter what age you are, there are always things in life that you wish you could change. You may have a bad life that you wish was better, or something beneath your nice life that you wish was gone. If we have something in our lives that we don’t know how to get rid of, we all wish that it would just go away. That is the subject of the new horror film, Wish Upon.
Clare Shannon (Joey King) is tired of her miserable life; including her dumpster diving dad (Ryan Philippe), the torture from her enemy Darcie (Josephine Langford), and her inability to talk to her crush, Paul (Mitchell Slaggert). When her dad presents her with a Chinese music box that says the owner will receive “seven wishes,” she becomes intrigued. When her dreams all start coming true, she finds her life changing for the better. However, for every wish she makes, the box claims the life of someone close to her. She must decide whether her new life is worth the pain she is causing everyone around her.
While many people would call Wish Upon a bad movie, I would like to call it a fun bad movie. First off, the performances from the cast were average. I always was a fan of Joey King when she was doing her early, child acting roles. I felt like she was playing pretty much the same kind of character that she always does, but it worked for the film. I thought everyone else did average jobs, as well. They did a good job playing their characters, even when most of the characters weren’t that likeable.
One of the things that I thought was genuinely good about the movie was the mythology. I liked the fact that the music box was of Chinese origin, instead of American. It was good thinking on the writer’s part to incorporate Chinese culture into the movie. It felt like a breathe of fresh air against all the other horror clichés that were happening at the same time.
However, I will agree with the critics about the true “originality” of the film. Aside from a few flashes of inspiration, Wish Upon follows all the beats of a normal horror film. The story was very predictable, following all of the basic story elements that come with these films today. The story didn’t try to give any new twists, and ended up being widely predictable.
Along with the by-the-numbers story, the characters were various types that you would see in horror movies nowadays. You had the self-centered girl who bullied the leading character, the obnoxious best friend, the helpful friend, and the parent who doesn’t see a problem in the current situation. Whether they were likable or not, all the characters were stereotypes that we have seen in so many movie before.
There wasn’t anything truly scary about the movie, but it did have a few successful moments of dread. Even when moments that were supposed to be scary were very predictable, there were some that actually had me fearful of when the payoff would happen. That made the movie enjoyable in some way.
Wish Upon is no first rate horror film, but there were still some moments that made it enjoyable overall. It’s various and obvious flaws make it one of those really fun, midnight camp horror films, like the bad slasher films of the 1980s. Not everyone is going to see it this way, but if you want a horror movie to just have fun with, give this one a try.
