Wish Upon makes you wish it were a better movie

Movie Title: Wish UPON

Grade: D

Rating: PG-13, 89 minutes

In a Nutshell: Wish Upon makes you wish it were better. Cliched and not very good, this horror movie would be fun to watch at a sleepover with a bunch of teenage girls while they make fun of it the entire time. There are so many moments that are just laughable.

Uplifting theme:

Be careful what you wish for.
The most meaningful life is one that is filled with service and love for others.

Things I liked:

I interviewed some people who were coming out of the movie, before I saw it, and they said they thought it was really scary. It’s not, but the audience I sat with seemed to really get a kick out of it and reacted quite vocally to jumps and scares and bad choices the actors on screen were making.
Joey King does a pretty good job as Clare Shannon. This is her 4th horror movie.
I thought it was hilarious when Tyler (Alexander Nunez) fell asleep with his cell phone in his hand. Such a teenager. Then, when Darcie wakes up, rotting in various parts of her body, he immediately starts taking pictures and posting them online.
There’s a Pokemon Go app rip-off about demons that was kind of funny.
I actually liked the surprise ending.
Ki Hong Lee is such a likable guy in all his movies.

Things I didn’t like:

It’s very similar to The Possession and seems like a total rip-off of previous books and movies you have seen. Original it is not. On IMDB, it says the film is loosely based on W.W. Jacobs’ short story The Monkey’s Paw.
The romantic story in the film just didn’t work or seem the least bit believable to anyone in the audience.
There was this really weird stock footage of a bunch of buildings in a city shot. What the ?? Even the sound effects and musical score sounded like mostly stock music clips.
There’s this really weird color correction that changes during scenes. I’m not sure if it was intentionally placed in order to show Clare’s moods or just accidentally changed during editing. ???
The characters are all pretty one-dimensional.
SPOILER: There is a suicide in the movie, but they don’t spend any time exploring the emotions that could have provided some depth to a character arc.
Some of the acting was really bad.
I’m not sure it was a good marketing strategy to advertise that the same people who did Annabelle did this movie, because that film wasn’t very good either.
SPOILER: What about wishing for world peace? A cure for cancer? End hunger? All of Clare’s wishes were extremely selfish. Admittedly, some of my wishes would focus on myself, but I’d like to think I’d eventually start thinking of others!