Wishcraft

In competition at the Brussels Fantasy Film festival 2002.

Here's another teen slasher coming down the screen. Curiously, it is not an inept one. No flashy camera angles, no genre parody nor blink-and-you'll-miss-it effect. Just a good old scary story of teenagers getting killed by a strange and very strong killer. A nerdy guy gets by mail a totem that guarantees him 3 wishes. he doesn't believe in it at all but decides to get one for a try. He wishes to go to the prom with the local beauty queen...and succeeds. For a second one, he wishes her to fall madly in love with him...and she does. But the bodycount starts getting bigger all around the campus and seems closely related to the (fake?) totem.

Having a nerd playing the hero is a pretty good idea (and the film does have very good ideas for itself as the killer really knows how to scare and kill its victims). All the actors (including sexy Huntley Ritter (Voodoo Academy, Bring it On)) are doing a good job though no awards will ever be given them to. Meat Loaf is just another cop with a very few scenes. Fun to see him in here but his acting skills are...hum...well, y'know.

Richard Wenk knows how to scare people from time to time and the storyline, though not revolutionnary, follows a very well known path. The suspense is also well handled as the final twist is unpredictable but really preposterous! Murders scenes are ingenious and originals which in this genre is quite a tour de force.

In conclusion, a very forgettable movie but competent and fun to watch.

Superwonderscope says 6

In WISHCRAFT, high school brainiac Brett Bumpers (Michael Weston) pines away for the beautiful cheerleader Samantha Warren (Alexandra Holden). One day, Brett receives a mysterious package containing a mummified bull's -insert favorite penile euphemism-, which grants him 3 wishes.

Upon making his first wish, Brett sets into motion a series of macabre and murderous events.

The story is a novel take on THE MONKEY'S PAW with several unexpected twists and gruesome turns. There's a lot going on, much of which only makes sense in the end. Both Weston and Holden are believable in their roles, making things all the more credible and creepy.

A superb horror-thriller for fans of the supernatural...

This actress is ALWAYS good, whatever she's in. She tends to play the ingenue with repressed sexual energy. She was good as Ross's underage girlfriend on "Friends" and she's good in this, too.

This movie on the whole is a bit of sleeper--I just didn't expect it to be as decent as it was. Someone here said it made "Cherry Falls" look good. Actually, it's the other way around. This movie plays out better than "Cherry Falls" in the long run (CF peeters out and turns into a predictable slasher film in the end; this film does not).

Also, the chemistry between the leads is good and the movie doesn't overextend itself and play up the supernatural too much with cheesy special effects they probably couldn't afford anyway. Who knows what it is that makes one B-movie work and another fall flat. The right actors? Better production design, lighting, direction? Who can say. Whatever it is, this films got it.

This teen slasher obviously lacks a decent amount of story, since i dropped in halfway & still managed to reconstruct the whole story ( not in the least because all of it was retold in the form of a confession that the Nerd is making to the Pretty Girlfriend ). Whatever. In spite of some good elements, it turned out to be a typical, ordinary member of the genre. In order to sit through it, these are the good elements : - Alexandra Holden - a girl being hung by use of a traffic light - a guy being crushed with a bowling ball - a cool killer outfit - a katana - Viking dart - a teacher handing us our comeuppance

The reason I rented this movie, was the feel-good plot. The geek gets the girl after being granted three wishes.

The movie is very standard feature, with some interesting blood and gore scenes. The love-story is much better, and there are some humoristic scenes that are worth watching.

If you want an interesting sci-fi movie about getting wishes granted, «Wishmaster» is better.

5/10