Wishcraft

A better than average horror movie which has some elements of teen slasher movies, sinister magic practices, and a mystery killer that is stalking a small town.

Some of the conventions of these kind of stories are tossed in as familiar clichés: teacher's pet nerd who likes popular cheerleader, loudmouth idiot jock, smart alek classmates, frustrated science teacher, useless bureaucrats, and other familiar personality types. But the film works somehow in its own weird way. The nerd is sent a magic object (you won't believe what it is), and a note stating he has 3 wishes. He uses the wishes just as you might expect. At the same time, vicious murders of some students commence, and follow the usual teen slasher flick methods.

The movie introduces too few characters to effectively conceal the identity of the killer, and also betrays the identity with too many clues. Random scenes that make no sense, and are obviously to establish the motive for the murders. The acting is actually pretty decent for the leads (nerd & cheerleader, although the nerd's bug eyes were annoying to look at), but acting of supporting roles are at a kindergarten level.

Fair, and OK if you have nothing better to do.

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

The acting was very bad, the casting was horrible, it was not very good, I had trouble watching it, until the last 15 minutes. The principal photography was off and on. I was curious what the budget was for this film, I would like to discuss this film further with the principal's

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

Is there anyone, anywhere, who doesn't already have an answer (most likely with all sorts of sub-clauses and strict definitions) to EXACTLY what they would wish for, given three chances!???

Never mind. For virtually everyone in the movie, the acting and dialogue are brilliant. The entirely natural relationships and deft avoidance of so many easy cliches makes this one of the best 'B' movies I've seen, and a lesson for directors & writers with much bigger budgets.

"Horror" seems a bit strong in describing Wishcraft. It's no worse than Scream, and not even as frightening - although a couple of scenes ('fake knife' & 'unmasked') are really well done. I didn't expect the revelation towards the end either. The end itself (which can ruin a film) is pretty good too.

It's difficult to say more without revealing the movie, and I recommend you see this the same way I did - optimistically, and with a vague hope that it's better than Wishmaster (which it so is).

In fact, if they pumped up the soundtrack and had more famous faces, this film would easily be in the same league as Scream, Swimfan and (dare I say it) an average episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.