Wishcraft (2002)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

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.

Wishcraft is funny, enjoyable and at times quite tense. It's a slick well made movie that will appeal greatly to anyone in to teen Horrors. The dialogue is snappy, the characters are funny without being too cheesy or caricatured, and the plot is well written.However, some of the movie didn't sit right. For one someone obviously took offence at one or other of the incredibly tame death sequences (most in fact cut away ages before anyone dies anyhow) or the fact that someone gets called a 'mother****er' at one point because it got an 18 certificate despite a sum total of about only 10 or 15 seconds of on screen violence and one swear word. I've seen harder 12s. I feel a lot of people will avoid it imagining it to be more hardcore than it is, or buy it expecting a horror-show and be disappointed.That's part of what happened to me. I saw 30 seconds of this on Sci-Fi one night, which was enough to make me check it out, and as a movie I enjoyed it greatly, but I felt the horror element was way too light to really think of it as much more than a teen comedy with horror elements. Most of the movies I normally watch are a lot more intense than this, and I was under the impression from the part I saw that this would at least sit next to Scream in terms of scariness and horror, if not going the full Halloween/Fri 13th slasher hog, but it really is much more comedy thriller than slasher movie.As such it's really entertaining, but I can't help feeling that it'll disappoint those seeking anything more. I don't think it helped I watched The Convent the night before which is just as funny but delivers hardcore gore, less asinine teens and real scares to boot. Wishcraft's a cool film, and firmly recommended to the more relaxed horror fan, but those who crave insanity will probably find it slow-paced and too user-friendly.

A teen horror movie with a limited budget and a lot of over-the-hill TV and movie stars, this movie should be unbearable. Oddly, it is quite enjoyable. It will never win any awards and it does not have the rich mythos of many other B-movies, yet it manages to tie many well-worn clichés from "Halloween", "Scream", "I Know What You Did Last Summer", and a long string of other teen scream movies into a coherent whole.Some of the scenes are done extremely well and provide real shocks, usually without resorting to blood. The film is smart enough to turn to camp when it wants to show a little blood, saving it from being one of the frequent bloodfests we are so often assaulted with.Here a few comments that are spoilers, but which can be enjoyed before or after the movie: SPOILERS AHEAD****************************** First, you just HAVE to see Michael Weston's makeup in the first half of the movie. It looks like it was done by his mother in order to conceal some acne for the prom. The base starts at his hairline and then stops quite abruptly at his beardline. Quite mesmerizing, it gives the impression of someone who was wearing a surgical mask while he was getting a tan.Second, as usual, people who receive three wishes are SO unimaginative in using them, and the main character is equally clueless in this movie. When I was a kid (and completely clueless about the real world,) I often thought about what I would wish for, if given the chance. (I also thought about what I would do if I were the last survivor of a war or plague. Perhaps this explains my personality.) In "Wishcraft" the wishes are for the main character's secret love to "go the Spring Blast with me"; for this secret love to "be madly in love with me"; and for the main character, when confronted with a life-threatening situation, to be "stronger, faster, and tougher" than the villain. Come on!! Get imaginative kid! I'll forgive the first wish, since you were just testing the waters, but you could have wished to "be irresistible to all women," or to have "a magic wallet that is always filled with money," or "to be able to turn invisible anytime I wish"; or to "have the powers of Superman." (In the final showdown, the main character turns out NOT to be "stronger, faster, and tougher" than the villain, who basically cleans the floor with him. I have not figured this part out yet...it is quite inconsistent.) Third, Meat Loaf is just great as the scenery-chewing, comedic relief. He's over the top, but thoroughly enjoyable.Finally, Zelda Rubinstein is just hilarious as the coroner. If I were the detective, I would have been investigating HER for the murders in about two minutes. I really hope that Ms. Rubinstein does not talk this way in the real world.END OF SPOILERS******************************** So, check this out if you have a free rental. Surprisingly, there is no nudity in this movie and the lead actress never shows her you-know-whats. In fact, nobody ever shows any, including her female sidekicks.I give this *** out of *****

This teen slasher obviously lacks a decent amount of story, since i dropped in halfway & still managed to reconstruct the whole story ( not in the least because all of it was retold in the form of a confession that the Nerd is making to the Pretty Girlfriend ). Whatever. In spite of some good elements, it turned out to be a typical, ordinary member of the genre. In order to sit through it, these are the good elements : - Alexandra Holden - a girl being hung by use of a traffic light - a guy being crushed with a bowling ball - a cool killer outfit - a katana - Viking dart - a teacher handing us our comeuppance