Clare (Joey King) lives together with her father, who is collecting scrap metal and junk in order to make a living. In addition to feeling embarrassed whenever her father goes dumpster diving, she’s also plagued with nightmares and memories from a childhood trauma: her mother committed suicide by hanging herself in the attic, and Clare was the one who found her. Due to this, Clare is troubled with a lot of “what if’s” in addition to a general dissatisfaction over the life she’s currently living. One day she gets a Chinese music box as a result from her father’s recent scrap hunt, and this box is supposed to grant wishes. Trying it out merely for the fun of it, she soon realizes that the wishes actually comes true. What she doesn’t realize until it’s too late however, is that the wishes come at a price…
Being granted wishes is not a concept you’ll only find in “Aladdin”. There are many stories dealing with this concept, and much darker ones too. One prime example would be “The Monkey’s Paw”, a horror novel from 1902 by W.W. Jacobs, where each wish is meddling with the fate of the one making it…and in quite a horrible way. “Wish Upon” is some kind of modern version of this, where each wish is only fulfilled by either the death or ill fate of someone else (example: wishing for wealth – the rich uncle dies and they inherit his house and money). It does take some time before our protagonist realizes the price tag on each of her wishes, but it isn’t until most of the people close to her falls victim to her wishes in some kind of way, that she decides that she must stop making them. But of course, it’s not just that easy…
“Wish Upon” is directed by John R. Leonetti, who also directed the first “Annabelle” movie from the Conjuring-universe. That being said, “Wish Upon” is a much milder dish which doesn’t live on jump-scares or scary things hiding in the dark. Instead, it’s a typical easy-going PG-13 horror flick that is well served together with some popcorn and candy on a Saturday evening. For what it is, the movie plays out pretty well.
Director: John R. Leonetti
Country & year: USA | Canada, 2017
Actors: Joey King, Ryan Phillippe, Ki Hong Lee, Mitchell Slaggert, Shannon Purser, Sydney Park, Elisabeth Röhm, Josephine Langford, Alexander Nunez, Daniela Barbosa, Kevin Hanchard, Sherilyn Fenn, Raegan Revord, Alice Lee, Victor Sutton
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt5322012/
Dani and Christian, a young American couple, are at the brink of breaking up. Christian has already started planning a trip abroad with his friends and is more or less starting to walk out the door on the relationship, but after Dani experiences a horrible family tragedy where she loses her parents and sister in a murder-suicide, Christian can’t make himself break out. Months later, when Dani finds out about his planned trip to Sweden with his friends, she invites herself along with them. One of Christian’s friends, the Swede Pelle, brings them all to a traditional “Midsommar” celebration in a secluded area called “Harga”. All seem to be flowers and sunshine, until it becomes clear that they’ve ventured into a sect whose “traditions” proves to be rather disturbing.
Megan is an ex-cop that’s just gotten out of rehab, and struggles to get back on her feet again. She applies for a job working the graveyard shift at the morgue (yeah…not exactly the best place to be if you’re a previous drug addict and struggling with trauma). She gets the job, and soon thereafter the disfigured corpse of a girl arrives. It doesn’t take long until weird things start happening at the morgue, but Megan tries to convince herself it’s her frazzled mind that makes her see things. Until things become too real for her and she realizes there’s something very wrong with that corpse.
The Wilson family owns a vacation house near the beach in Santa Cruz. Adelaide, the wife in the family, had an experience at that beach when she was a little girl and has no desire at all to revisit the place. Her husband convinces her to go there, however, together with the Tyler family to have a good time. Things don’t go as well as planned for, and back at the vacation house that night things turn even worse. Four mysterious people dressed in red appears outside the house, breaking in and terrorizing them. What’s even worse, is that all of these strangers look exactly like themselves…
Danvers State Mental Hospital is an old asylum that has been empty since 1985. An asbestos team lead by Gordon (Peter Mullan) and Phil (David Caruso) is hired to do the preparations for the renovation of the old building. With a bonus payment of 10.000 dollars hanging over their heads if they get the job done within one week, the working environment becomes filled with stress and bickering. This is nothing compared to what the asylum has in store for them, however…
Tree Gelbman, a young college student, wakes up in a guy’s room, hungover as hell and barely no memory from last night. On top of it all, it’s her birthday today, a day she is not too fond of for reasons later revealed in the movie. She leaves the guy’s room with a pissy attitude, and we see pretty quickly that this is a girl that tends to make bad choices in her life, and treat people around her like crap. At the end of the day, she gets chased by someone wearing a mask, and ends up being killed. And then she wakes up in the guy’s room again, repeating the day all over again. In a desperate fight to reveal the identity of the killer, and try to figure out how to avoid being killed by him/her, she relives the day of her birthday and murder over and over…
Jeffrey Franken (James Lorinz) is a young medical student whose fiancee, Elizabeth Shelley, gets overrun by a lawnmower at a backyard party and gets shredded to pieces. The only thing left of her is her head, which he puts in the freezer. He’s determined to get her back in some way, and arranges his garage into a typical “mad scientist” lab. Then he drives around New York’s dark streets to pick up the finest hookers to assemble body parts for his new girlfriend.
«The Devil’s Candy» is an indie horror movie written and directed by Sean Byrne. I found out about this movie while watching some horror trailers on Youtube, and thought “an indie horror film that actually seem to have a high visual standard, and doesn’t look like it’s made out of 90% close-up shots? Let’s see what this is about”.