Wish Upon

Wish Upon is a horror tale that tells the story of a mysterious Chinese music box that grants seven wishes, but at a price.

Starring the adorable Joey King alongside Ryan Phillippe and Elisabeth Rohm it's an original piece, though clearly influenced by the classic tale of the monkeys paw. Thankfully I like that old tale so was excited to see what new twists they brought to the table, and quite frankly I walked away happy though some influence came from Final Destination (2000) as well.

It's a well constructed, suitably paced movie with a fantastic cast and more than a sprinkle of good ideas. I find Joey King very likeable, not only the fact that she's adorable but she's a competent actress with hopefully a great career ahead of her and it's about time Phillippe returned to form.

If you like alternative horror that doesn't rely on a dude with a knife, ghosts, big scary monsters or demonic themes then this may well be for you. There were elements that left me scratching my head but nothing that wasn't forgivable.

Well worth a watch.

The Good:

Fantastic cast

Solid concept

The Bad:

Dreadful cover art

Couple of loose ends

I dug around for this movie because it has Joey King in the lead role and I think she is one of the better young actresses today. I got it on BluRay from my public library.

Early on we see that the mother apparently hung herself. No explanation why. The daughter (King) grows into a high school teen with usual teen difficulties. But her dad is a "picker" and brings home some sort of ancient Chinese box, it looks like a music box but she can't open it. We soon find out it grants wishes, as many as seven. But there is a price, for each wish a loved one dies.

Eventually this creates all kinds of problems for the girl and she has to figure out a way to undo them. It turns more difficult than she ever imagined.

I enjoyed this movie, King of course does a great job, and the last scene was quite unexpected. Then there is another short scene during the credits. Overall a bit better than its current IMDb rating would suggest.

Of note, it was written by a woman.

Despite what everyone on the internet said about this movie, I watched it, and I'm glad I did. It's interesting, the idea behind the plot is a really good one, it resembles the monkey's paw story. It's a good movie, and if you are into the Final Destination saga you will sure like this; the death scenes are just as gory and awful as the ones you see in those movies. Plus, the main actress did a great job portraying her role. It's not the movie of the year, it gets cheesy during some scenes, but it's fine and worth a watch, maybe a re-watch even.

The plot sounded really good, there were some good ideas here and there.

I enjoy some of the death Scene, ,as they were bit like Final Destination but not on the same level as those deaths.

The acting was a mixed bag , some scenes felt good and others felt forced.

Also some of the script was very bad in places, didn't help either.

Felt like half stuff was missing, seem a lot must of been cut.

The ending was very predicable, I knew from the start, that was going to happen.

The last scenes was hilarious bad! , it was meant to be shocking but it was shocking, as it was so badly done, even made me laugh out loud.

Overall not very good but watchable as it moves quickly through all the cliches you can expect in a very uneven manner. Decent backstory, some effective scenes including the end and the cast do their best. Let down often though by poor direction/script and story development. This really needed a lot more work to approach being a good film. However watchable as undemanding B movie horror.