This Canadian slasher flick debuts on video with almost no publicity in
the UK despite having a theatrical release in it’s native Canada.
Mary loves scary movies, unfortunately for her she suffers from an
over-active imagination and the films leave such a lasting impression that
if she doesn’t take medication and allow her parents to lock her door at
night she has a tendency to sleepwalk through the neighbourhood causing
all sorts of disruption.
Beytraying a promise to her dad, Mary and her friends go to see the latest
box-office sensation ‘The Wisher’. Unable to sit through the film, Mary
leaves the cinema. However it appears that the film’s main character
followed her out of the cinema and is now granting her wishes.
The film looked unorigional judging by the trailer alone but when I
actually watched the film I couldn’t believe just how many plot points are
stolen from other movies. There’s a fine line between homage and
copyright infringement that this film crosses countless times!!
Obviously based on the story ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ the film borrows heavily
or rather steals it’s plot and mythology from amongst others ‘Wishmaster’
and ‘Wishcraft’ and based it’s villain on Freddy Krueger whilst using
‘Scream’ as a mold for the violence in the movies issue. The film also
features ‘Devil’s Prey’, Christina’s House’, The Convent’, ‘The Fear :
Halloween Night and even Halloween Resurrection and it is about as good as
the latter.
A weird production in that it was filmed in a Galaxy cinema and then
screened there as part of a special deal. The film is a bit jumbled and
has absoloutely no point!!
A sub-plot involving subliminal messages having effects on viewers only
adds to the confusion, and the ending where the unknown cast and one
member of the band deegrees romp around the streets of Canada makes
absouloutely no sense!!
Ron Silver should be ashamed of himself!
OVERALL SUMMARY
If you have nothing else to re-watch for the fifth time you could do worse
than this as it is somewhat easy on the eye. Just don’t expect any
origionality.
