User reviews

In competition at the Brussels Fantasy Film festival 2002.

Here's another teen slasher coming down the screen. Curiously, it is not an inept one. No flashy camera angles, no genre parody nor blink-and-you'll-miss-it effect. Just a good old scary story of teenagers getting killed by a strange and very strong killer. A nerdy guy gets by mail a totem that guarantees him 3 wishes. he doesn't believe in it at all but decides to get one for a try. He wishes to go to the prom with the local beauty queen...and succeeds. For a second one, he wishes her to fall madly in love with him...and she does. But the bodycount starts getting bigger all around the campus and seems closely related to the (fake?) totem.

Having a nerd playing the hero is a pretty good idea (and the film does have very good ideas for itself as the killer really knows how to scare and kill its victims). All the actors (including sexy Huntley Ritter (Voodoo Academy, Bring it On)) are doing a good job though no awards will ever be given them to. Meat Loaf is just another cop with a very few scenes. Fun to see him in here but his acting skills are...hum...well, y'know.

Richard Wenk knows how to scare people from time to time and the storyline, though not revolutionnary, follows a very well known path. The suspense is also well handled as the final twist is unpredictable but really preposterous! Murders scenes are ingenious and originals which in this genre is quite a tour de force.

In conclusion, a very forgettable movie but competent and fun to watch.

Superwonderscope says 6

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

This actress is ALWAYS good, whatever she's in. She tends to play the ingenue with repressed sexual energy. She was good as Ross's underage girlfriend on "Friends" and she's good in this, too.

This movie on the whole is a bit of sleeper--I just didn't expect it to be as decent as it was. Someone here said it made "Cherry Falls" look good. Actually, it's the other way around. This movie plays out better than "Cherry Falls" in the long run (CF peeters out and turns into a predictable slasher film in the end; this film does not).

Also, the chemistry between the leads is good and the movie doesn't overextend itself and play up the supernatural too much with cheesy special effects they probably couldn't afford anyway. Who knows what it is that makes one B-movie work and another fall flat. The right actors? Better production design, lighting, direction? Who can say. Whatever it is, this films got it.

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.

A nerd gets a bull penis in the mail one day, which grants him three wishes. Meanwhile a killer is on the loose. The acting is ok, I guess. Except I didn't really care for the nerd's nerdier friend at all. The ending managed to be both silly, corny AND stupid at the same time. Meatloaf seems to make REALLY good movie role choices (Fight Club, Rocky Horror, Wayne's World, etc..) or pretty bad ones (pretty much any other movie, including this one)

My Grade: C- Where i saw it: Cinemax

So wish craft seems like a few people who viewed this film 📼 didn't enjoy it. Good film made in 2002 only cost me two pounds. I thought it was good value and worth watching, the horror was spot on and the actors all played their parts well. Meat loaf good actor and rock singer worked his part very well, and Zelda Rubinstein from the Poltergeist movies Also played her part quite well. Certainly entertained me so my score 7 out of 10. Jacey well enjoyed this one.

Wishcraft is another bad teen horror movie. It has all the cliches and very, very bad climax. Sometimes seems like the movie tries to be funny, but the jokes...(argh!)

The main character gets a "wishing device" which is bull´s penis... and then he gets 3 wishes, which all seem to connect with the killer. What a plot!

I give "Wishcraft" 2 points out of 10 (* out of *****)

At Edinburgh's Dead by Dawn horror festival, I had the dubious pleasure of watching Wishcraft, in which a 20-something `teen' cast get killed by some nasty demon-looking creature, after one receives a mysterious bulls penis in the post which grants wishes. Yup, it's the old teen slasher at it again, although in it's defence, Wishcraft does feature a couple of daftly inventive deaths, such as the bowling ball sequence. Sadly, it gets far too bogged down in the teen angst angle, as our geeky `hero' Brett (Michael Weston) wishes for the most beautiful blonde in the school be his girlfriend. Having introduced the killer, the film then completely forgets about it for about half an hour, & none of the characters seem even remotely aware or interested that a killer is on the prowl. There's the suggestion that this is some evil, demonic entity at work, but this angle is completely fluffed & thrown away in favour of convention. Many recent slashers have tried to gain kudos by having genre favourites appearing, such as Jeffrey Combs in I Still Know., or Robert Englund in Urban Legend. Here, we get Poltergeists' Zelda Rubinstein making a cameo as a coroner. Meat Loaf also turns up as a policeman, but that's about as much fun as you're likely to get. I watched this film at around 6 o'clock in the morning, having been up constantly watching movies since half past nine the day before. The best thing I can say about it is that it managaed to keep me awake.

I highly recommend this film! Although it's rated 'R', there's no nudity, BUT the movie hits a homerun in the LOVE SPELL theme...

Here's the synopsis... Boy receives a strange totem that gives him three wishes... first wish is for school's most beautiful girl (and she is a major 'hottie') to go to the dance with him. Incidentally, she's also the school's superjock's girlfriend), so the nerd is shocked when the girl suddenly asks him to the dance the next day. The film spends time on the girl, and she does a great job of acting shocked. Once the dance is over, the spell is over and she tells him that 'no hard feelings but our relationship is over'.

The girl goes back to her boyfriend and things back to normal BUT he wants this girl to be his girlfriend, so he uses his second wish to make the girl be his girlfriend and love him forever. The next day she's at his door acting like she has an incredible crush on him - lovestruck beyond belief - and although she questions these sudden new feelings, she can't help herself. This is played out perfectly, providing the viewer to witness what she's going through - providing us her pov.

Like every HORROR movie there's someone killing students and because giving the ending away would ruin the movie - lets say that the ending and the actions are very appropriate... and sweet justice proves the victor.

The theme and controlling forces makes this movie erotic - despite no nudity... and the acting is good, which makes you believe that the girl is really under a love spell. The movie is consistent and well worth a look see.

I highly recommend it! :-)

At first, I thought Wishcraft was going to be a cheesy clone of Wishmaster for teenagers. It did in fact turn out to be cheesy, but it's more of a Scream clone than anything else. There's a bit of supernatural phenomena, but it's kept to an absolute minimum. The violence is more in line with a PG-13 horror movie, and I think Wishcraft got its R rating mostly from a few choice profanities uttered merely to avoid a PG-13.

If you like campy and quirky horror movies, you'll probably enjoy Wishcraft. If you're looking for atmosphere, gore, violence, or nudity, I think you're just going to be disappointed. This movie just doesn't take itself very seriously, and it never truly commits to being an outright horror movie. Instead, it seems to be more of a teen thriller, influenced by slasher movies.

The story was better than I was expecting, though the ending kind of came out of nowhere. I doubt many people were expecting it. While it admittedly was difficult to predict, there was no real foreshadowing or anything, which leads me to think that it was done merely to surprise audiences. That's fine, but it's not particularly skilled writing.

If you're in the mood for a campy thriller/slasher starring 30 year old teenagers, this is certainly a fine choice. Some people will find it a bit too inhibited (especially for an R-rated horror movie) or boring (much of the movie is spent developing the romance between the protagonist and his girlfriend), but I thought it was enjoyable.

A high school student (Brett) receives a mysterious package in the mail that holds some kind of mutilated animal genitalia and states it grants three wishes. After initially throwing it straight in the bin Brett has a change of heart as the school dance looms and digs it out again.

Making wishes triggers a string of 'Scream-like' murders by a cloaked figure, which come across as somewhat supernatural, on other students. So not only do you have the mystery of the package but also a whodunit.

It's not the greatest movie but it's quite fun.

I was flipping through the channels once, when I came across this movie. Had I known what it was about,I would have skipped over it, but I noticed that parts of it were filmed in my home town so I decided to watch it. Damn this movie sucks! I usually don't enjoy the teen slasher flick genre, but this one makes all those I know What you did last summers, and Urban Myth movies look great. It is a b movie so i shouldn't expect much, but none of these actors and actresses could act! And some of it just didn't make sense. However, this movie held my attention because of the wonderfully awful dialouge. Lines like "Hey man, I know stuff!", and "thats not my bowling ball!!!!" as well as the wimpy Bretts' whines and whimpers made me laugh so hard, I couldn't change the channel. Definitely wouldn't recommend watching it, but if there is NOTHING else on TV, and you don't feel like reading, playing videogames, playing outside, going out with friends, or doing anything else that would keep you away from your TV, then watch it.

On this movie you cannot comment in ways like "eeew, another bad teen movie", because in my opinion there is much more in it than just the things you can easily be seen.

When I watched the first minutes of that movie, I wondered what this film would be about, because I was awaiting a horror movie. But with some more minutes passing by, I started to like this one - and then I got my horror.

Well, I think the main disadvantage of that movie is, to choose a totem which is a bull's penis. This is neither funny nor anything else. That's the point where I thought "eeew, what a bad idea".

Besides the storyline of the murderer there is this love relationship between Samantha and Brett. And there also is a hidden moral, if you read between the lines.

Brett wishes a relationship with Samantha, but after some time he realizes that you cannot force feelings like he did with his wish. So, I think this movie is much more complex, as you might think...

This has a standard set up establishing the nerdy high schooler and all the cliques and tropes in this type of setting. The supernatural element is subtle, adding to the quirky nature of the film. Mild exploitation but luckily the film makers added some redeeming quality to the main character. Kill sequences are decent. More of a send back to 90s films but milder for more ages. Nothing shocking or new, but still a decent "fun" movie.