Director: Jack Sholder
Year: 1999
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural Slasher
Plot:
Following a botched art heist, the only surviving member of the art-thief group who pulled it off learns she's freed the dreaded Djinn from his imprisoned jeweled home must stop his rampage through a prison collecting souls, which makes him grow stronger, before he can inherit the world.
Review:
This here turned out to be a bit better than the rather routine and run-of-the-mill sequel it could've been. As in the first one, this continues to provide the goods here as well, with some cool deaths and some nice gore, mainly in the manner in which the wishes from the genie are granted, which are turned into their most malicious and make for a really fun time here. From the harvesting done here in the prison settings to the encounter with the Russians once freed, this goes through some great gags here of corrupting the wishes exactly like the original where the wishes turned out to cause such vicious, violent deaths from getting pushed through steel jail-cell doors, being skinned alive and having their bodies switching with others after giving their wish to corrupt so there is an ample amount of gore in here, much more so than the first one, and is indeed the goriest one in the series.
Also, there's some good stuff here, giving this one a lot to like more in the numerous, constant action scenes here, which come along nicely throughout as the film moves very fast and showcases all sorts of fun scenes. The opening jewelry robbery is quite nice with the actual stealing and the police intervention capturing the guy, the fine prison riot where he takes over the whole prison, capturing them and imprisoning the two into the interior of the stone where the Djinn holds them in a freakish scenario that's quite impressive, though there's the centerpiece scenes here in the massive, lavish casino as the different games and contraptions get supernaturally charged and begin flying through the air taking them out or even just destroying them outright in even more gory attacks throughout here which makes for a really enjoyable sequence here. By resulting in these grand set-pieces, including the rather freaky visuals that tend to pop up when he goes for a kill, mixed alongside these other scenes, this all comes off really nicely here, and really carries the film. Loaded up with some more dark humor in the quips and some rather impressive facts about their backstory found in the investigation scene, it manages to overcome its mild flaws somewhat.
The main problem with this is the fact that the majority of the film consists of the genie running around granting the wishes that are obviously doomed and the ones who have come before him are clearly knowledgeable of this part, yet there's no reason to continually feature scenes showing them completely unaware of his past and then meeting an unjust end simply for his power to grow. This facet has run its course far more than expected and makes this feel way too familiar and similar when these are repeated throughout the film. The only other flaw here to this one is the really lousy special effects for everything other than the dead bodies, for the CGI here for the locusts during their casino attack is just pitiful or the transformation of the Djinn into his different identities being rather obvious changes here based on the lame flashing effects done to signal that change, though there's other small examples here. These are the film's main problems.
Overview: ***.5/5
Decent enough but still with some problems, this might be a bit of a downgrade from the original, but it has enough going for it to be a decent watch that's let down by its drawbacks. Give it a shot if you're intrigued by this kind of genre fare or were a fan of the original, while most others out there might want to heed caution.
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