Director: John R. Leonetti
Writer: Barbara Marshall
Stars: Joey King, Ryan Phillippe, Ki Hong Lee
Plot: A teenage girl discovers a box that carries magic powers and a deadly price for using them.
Rotten Tomatoes Score: Critics 17% Audience 32%
Why I watched it: Cause it’s a horror film, but because of the terrible reviews I kind of hemmed and hawed about it but itunes had it on for .99 cents, I decided to give it a go.
Thoughts: I will say this for horror films and bad reviews they don’t usually stop me, they might delay me a bit. I will say I went in with super low expectations to say the least.
What I liked: The basic set up is decent, a girl gets a wish box and she can make 7 wishes but after every wish granted a person she knows dies, she pays in blood but not her blood. In brings up a good moral question and you had the fact that the girl is a teenager and you have to wonder if she puts herself and what she needs first. With that being said for everything I can say nice about this film there’s triple that on the negative side, but in this part we’ll stay positive.
On the acting side I always like seeing Sheilyn Fenn even though she doesn’t have much to do here. I liked Ki Hong Lee, he was a different pick and type for that role and he did a decent job of kind of being the moral center.
I liked the wish box itself, I liked the look and the fact it only opened and played music when it was getting it’s pound of flesh. I actually didn’t mind the ending it made sense and it was a lesson learned. At least they didn’t make it all a dream.
What I didn’t like: First off this film is not cut together well, Phillippe’s appearance seem to change from scene to scene, bread, almost no bread kind of scruffy beard. Also the timeline is weird, they take way to long to find a body and noway it would have looked like that.
I didn’t care for the lead performance by Joey King, she didn’t bring the weight or the likability to the roll that it needed. The whole high school thing was one very long and very old cliche.
The film totally rips off the kills from Final Destination, really why did the kills have to be like that, it’s a cursed evil wishing box couldn’t it just kill people by stopping their heart, the kills were PG kills so no cool gore and for the most part they were laughable. I also thing they missed a very good plot point by having the lead not care if people died as long as she got her wishes as long as she ended up happy who cares, they try to go in that direction then do a u-turn and go back to the cliche already in motion.
Final Thoughts: All in all a missed opportunity, I didn’t hate it, I liked it more than say something like Bye Bye Man, I know that’s not saying much. They had an idea that they didn’t explore fully and that’s too bad.
Rating: 4/10
Movie Burner Entertainment 