Wish Upon

Wish Upon

Starring Joey King, Ki Hong Lee, Sydney Park, Ryan Phillippe

Directed by John Leonetti

The Story:
Clare Shannon (Joey King) witnessed her mother hang herself at an early age, and now she's a teenager who's constantly picked on by the pretty, popular people. Her father (Ryan Phillippe) finds an antique Chinese box while dumpster diving, and she concludes she can get seven wishes from it.  As she keeps wishing for her life to get better, it does, but people around her die.  Once the seventh wish is cast, the box owns her soul, but can Clare resist the urge to make that one final wish?

The Synopsis:
I don't normally do this, and I'm a huge proponent of not doing it, but with a film this awful, this catastrophous (it's so bad I made up a word for it), this mind-numbingly awful, I find it my civil duty as a God-fearing man to spoil the entire movie (if you call this a movie) for you the reader, so I can save you from 90 minutes of your life you could never get back, and so you can save your money, even if you see it at a local dollar theater, that's a dollar that could've gone to better use - like feeding your dog or a local pigeon.

So...now that you know there will be spoilers abounding, read on at your own risk.

Seriously, I am going to spoil the entire thing.  Not that you can spoil something that's already spoiled, but the movie is like dirt that's mixed with other dirt and then Pigpen from Charlie Brown walks by and rubs it on his shoe (thanks "Archer" for that reference, I've been dying to use it for something and here's my chance).

So the movie begins with a solemn Elisabeth Rohm (who is probably thinking, "I was in 'Joy' and 'American Hustle' and Jennifer Lawrence has this bright shining career and here I am in this crapheap pile) who sends her young daughter away on a bike to ride down the street, and when said child returns she finds her mother in the attic hanging herself.

Years later, Clare, now a self-sufficient, yet highly insecure, yet someone who stands up for herself, but also someone who wishes to be popular, is riding off to school on her bike living in the same house where her mother died (her bike is even still lying on its side when she came back to the house as a young child, I guess they don't believe in adequate lawn care).  Her father is a professional dumpster diver (I can't wait to see that on a resume) and she is constantly embarrassed of him.  #teenageproblems.

So she goes to school where she has two best friends (Shannon Purser - Barbara from "Stranger Things" #thisaintnojusticeforbarbara; and Sydney Park - a.k.a. Cyndie from "The Walking Dead" and also the best friend I want in my life), but all three of them are social outcasts for some reason.  They're picked on by the pretty people, who are about as stereotypical as they come - the only thing they needed was Starbucks in their hands and you got the typical white girls.  Then there's Paul (Mitchell Slaggert...I find his last name pretty humorous), the BMOC and of course draws the affections of our main protagonist (or is she an antagonist?  By the end I didn't know or care).  So Clare gets picked on, but she fights back, leading to a #girlfight in the cafeteria that of course everyone records on their phones instead of, you know, help.  So cliche.  Also, in case you didn't realize, I'm also being cliche by inserting hastags here because the movie is NOTHING but cliches and stereotypes.

So Clare's dad finds a mysterious box with Chinese writing (it just so happens Clare is taking a Chinese class in school! #ohtheirony), and she knows JUSTENOUGH Chinese to understand that the box said it can grant seven wishes for whoever touches it, but of course she doesn't understand the strict warnings with using it.  It's kind of like holding a knife to an outlet thinking it's a good idea to stick it in there without reading the manual of the outlet that says "do not stick things in here."

She makes her first wish - wishing for the pretty, popular girl would just rot.  Cue the next morning when said girl wakes up to find her skin rotting!  Oh the irony!  Clare doesn't seem too phased by it, and doesn't seem to connect the dots (much "kudos" to Joey King's flat, blank, lifeless stare that she does throughout).  Then she goes in search of her dog (I went to doesthedogdie.com to find if any animals die in this film, because I can handle a slew of idiots perishing, but once one animal bites the dust I'm an emotional wreck), and when she starts searching it's my cue to leave the theater, wait outside until I hear a scream, count to twenty and then re-enter the theater.  Sure enough, the dog is dead (#justiceforrexorwhateverthedogsnamewas) and it doesn't seem to phase Clare too much, or maybe I missed that part because I couldn't bare to see it.

So she makes another wish, wishing Paul would fall in love with her.  Of course the next day he's smitten by her, and she wonders why he is, not like she just wished it or anything.  Of course, with this new wish comes another death, this time her uncle who dies in the most humorous way possible (although there's more humorous deaths to come): he slips in the tub and hits his head hard on the linoleum (not so funny), but then wakes up and sits up and hits his head on the faucet and dies (so funny).

Again, Clare doesn't seem phased, and wishes she would inherit her uncle's entire estate.  Oh the irony, it happens!  Cue montage of Clare and her friends going out and spending all the money!  Oh this movie is so fun and filled with joyful, happy times you often forget this is tying to be a horror movie - I'm sure the director forgot that as well.

Anyway, as it goes, her neighbor is making dinner and the garbage disposal doesn't work, so of course she reaches her hand inside to find out why, while her body hovers vicariously close to the on switch.  Oh, but wait, there's more!  The pot on the other side of the kitchen is boiling, so maybe the house will blow up?  This is highly reminiscent (in fact, this whole movie is) of the "Final Destination" series, but they did it WAY better.  Anyway, just when you think she's going to either blow up or lose a hand, she gets the disposal unstuck and turns off the gas.  Maybe death won't come calling after all and everyone can live happily ever oh wait she got her ponytail stuck in the disposal it just turned on and snapped her neck.  #firstworldproblems.

So Clare makes another wish, wishing her dad would stop embarrassing her.  All of a sudden he's the reincarnation of Kenny G who plays smooth jazz on his saxophone and receives the icky admiration of Clare's high school friends.  Oh, and in the midst of all this, she and Paul start dating, but no one cares. 

Now she's starting to catch on, like the cat who gives up chasing the red light after she sees her master holding the toy, only to once again be deceived by its bright color and chase after it again.  She goes to her only Asian friend, who takes her to his Asian cousin or something (who will decipher the rest of the box for a box of won tons, I kid you not), and of course she manages to decipher more of the box, but not all of it.  There's one particular line she can't translate!  So she'll send it to a friend and wait for his response, I'm sure it's nothing serious.

That night, due to the recent wish she made, her Asian friend's cousin pays the price.  The lights go out in her apartment just as she got an email response for what the final phrase means, and she looks none too pleased.  She goes to the roof to get reception to call her cousin and offers an ominous warning instead of, you know, telling him what it actually said, and then she drops the phone down eight flights of stairs to the pavement below.  She goes back inside and trips on a rug and plunges headfirst into the horn of a bull statue she has for some reason.

As Clare and Paul start dating, all Paul's friends abandon him because Clare is just so plain, and Clare turns her back on her friends, so it's like a typical relationship where the only person you communicate with is your significant other.  Clare wishes to be the most popular girl in school (#onceagainsocliche), and she is!  She's beloved, admired, adored, and everything is sunshine and roses - if you forget the death thing, which apparently she has.   Her Asian friend (who is named Ryan...) goes to his cousin's loft because of the message she left, but doesn't hear from her.  He calls her phone and finds it ringing on the pavement...which is a miracle in itself, because it fell at least eight stories and wasn't protected by an Otterbox nor was it a Nokia, so I have no clue how it survived.  He finds his dead cousin impaled by the bull statue horn and contacts Clare, telling her the phrase they didn't decipher (not sure how he found out) was "when the music ends, the blood price is paid."  A bit more harsh than "It ain't over until the fat lady sings," but I guess labeling ladies as fat is mean and cruel.  He also tells her that if she loses, destroys, or sells the box on Ebay, all her wishes would vanish, but also if she finishes all seven wishes then the demon inside will own her soul.  That should've been enough to stop anyone, but Clare has now turned full-Carrie and doesn't care: she's popular now and she likes her new life and everyone else can just go rot! (heh).

Oh, and Ryan also tells a nifty story of a man who had the box before Clare who got everything he wanted, but then lost his children and wife and dies.  And that person is none other than Jerry O'Connell!  What a cameo!  His first wish was probably losing all that weight from "Stand By Me."

Anyway, as Clare made another wish, it's time for death to make its due.  But this time it's doubly exciting because it can be one of two people!  We see Clare's father on the side of the road at night with a punctured tire, and Clare's BFF (Sydney Park) going up an elevator to catch a Pokemon Go! wannabe app demon thing.  I'm on pins and needles in eager anticipation to see which of these hapless victims death will claim as its own, until I realize I'm actually sitting on my pin cushion that I've been using to knit a scarf while I've been watching this (#winteriscoming).  Her father is under the car trying to get a lugnut or something and his leg is SOCLOSE to the jack!  Will he kick it and flatten himself like a pancake?  Her friend is coming down the elevator and it gets stuck!  Will she fall and flatten herself like a pancake?  Man, I can really go for some pancakes!

Her father makes it out under the car and we all think he's okay, but the spare tire rolls down the road, hits a car and ricochets back at him, but we don't know if it hit him or not.  At the hotel, the elevator breaks and her friend plummets to her death, and we find that her father ducked out of the way of the killer tire.  So her friend is dead, her other friend blames her for it, and she is visibly insane.

That night she's at home when Paul breaks in (oh, forgot to mention, she breaks up with him  because he's talking to other girls and taking pictures of her, often as she's sleeping, because he was stalking her as well which was mentioned earlier but it was so unimportant I just forgot to mention that until just now) and asks if it's really over, and she says yes, so he slits his wrist.  The ambulance comes and takes him away, and she discovers the box is gone.  They lose the mansion, everyone hates her again, and things are as they were - except, you know, the dead people.  She then discovers her friend took the box to protect her, and she goes full Gollum and wrestles the box back, saying, "it's mine!  My own!  My...precccciousssssss" (alright, she doesn't say that, but if she did I would probably cheer), and then threatens Ryan who only wants to protect her by not making any more wishes by telling him if he doesn't leave her alone she'll cast a wish against him.  #ohsnap!

With two wishes left, she wishes for her mother to never had died.  At this point I was pleading in my head, "zombiemother, zombiemother, zombiemother, zombiemother!" But unfortunately it's just regular mother, and now Clare has younger twin sisters, or possibly midget demons who want to drink the blood of the innocents, I don't know, but it'd be an interesting plot for "Wish Upon 2: Wish Harder!"

It's then that Clare discovers a shocking truth, a twist so amazing and so profound that M. Night kicked himself in the butt several times for not coming up with it himself - her mother had the box before her!  Alright, that's not a big shock or surprise because the film opens with her dumping the box in the trash, and anyone with an IQ higher than a fly trying to get into a room through a closed window could decipher this twist coming a mile away, but still A+ for effort.  So in traditional modern day fashion, she blames the box for all her problems, not the fact that she actually MADE wishes KNOWING it would cause the death of people or anything.

Speaking of, it's time for the pied piper to play its merry tune, and the victim this time is Clare's father, who gets a chainsaw to the head.  Fed up with everything, she makes her last wish to go back to the day when her dad found the box.

She wakes up at precisely that day.  Just like playing a country song in reverse, her dog is alive, her friends are alive, her father is alive and her creepy yet loving vegan neighbor is alive.  All is well in the world and she finds the box, taking it to Ryan and telling him to bury it.  She is very happy because she managed to cheat death.  Kudos for a sixteen-year-old (at least I think that's her age) who managed to beat death, that's existed since the beginning of time, but he got bested by her.  No hard feelings.

Oh, wait, nevermind.  She just got hit by a car and flies through the air so long and so far I thought Tony Stark send his Iron Man armor to her so she could fly away from the situation, but no - she crashes on the hood of another car and dies.  #deathalwayswins.

The Summary:
If I had the wishing box Clare had, here would be my seven wishes, in order:
"I wish this movie never existed."
"I wish this movie never existed."
"I wish this movie never existed."
"I wish this movie never existed."
"I wish this movie never existed."
"I wish this movie never existed."
"I wish for a million more wishes."

The Score: F