Director: Scott Jeffrey
Year: 2021
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: Devil Djinn; Evil Genie
Genre: Supernatural Slasher
Plot:
Trying to get past her traumatic past, a student heartbroken over her father’s death is tasked with preparing a paper on urban legends to help cope with the situation, but when a group of friends decide to summon a mystical being for her studies, they find the creature twisting their wishes to kill them.
Review:
For the most part, this was a fairly enjoyable genre effort. One of the better elements present is the unusually strong setup at play that provides a far more immersive start for things to unfold. The build-up here involving her struggling to come to terms with the death of her father and struggling through life as well as school serves this one quite a strong setup for her as a whole. Knowing that the paper is a way to get herself caught up on studies due to missing everything for truly valid reasons and that there's a lot of turmoil within her friend group trying to get her back into the good graces of the college or the personal squabbles with her mother helps to make for a solid background on things which helps the later scenes involving the creatures’ appearance have a bit of emotional resonance. That becomes even more exposed once the wish comes true and there’s a highly impressive emotional connection to what’s going on at play here based on the wish which helps to carry this along somewhat nicely.
While that setup works quite nicely, those scenes involving the creature coming for the friend group and delivering the typically demonic form of wish-twisting that’s in play here come off incredibly well. With the opening sequence showing a previous victim getting that kind of treatment where the Djinn’s powers are observed forcing her to off herself following the wish gone wrong, the later scenes targeting the friend group after the summoning ritual carry a rather creepy and unnerving tone to it. The implications of the Djinn forcing itself into the victim’s world and trying to force them into making the wish so that it can twist everything around in grand fashion which features some great effects to pull off on top of the solid chases and confrontations to get everything accomplished and giving this a lot to like.
This one does have some big issues involved with it. The main drawback at the center of the film is the rather sluggish tempo that keeps this one struggling to maintain a great sense of pace or energy for a lot of the middle sections. Focusing on storylines that aren’t that interesting or just sloughing through a never-ending series of scenes about the group dealing with the aftereffects of the Djinn’s powers take up a large part of the film and very little of it makes for an exciting time trying to get to the creature’s attempts at tricking them. As well, there’s also the disappointingly cheesy and obvious face of the creature which never moves and just flops around hilariously, undermining a lot of the attempts at terror and making this a lot more comical than expected which are enough to bring this down.
Overview: ***.5/5
A generally fun feature that has a few minor drawbacks, as a whole there’s a lot to like with this one as it’s got enough to enjoy here based on its positive points overwhelming the negatives. Those who appreciate this kind of indie fare or are fans of the creative crew will have the most to like with this one while those who are turned off by any of these features will want to seek caution.
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