If Djinn were a person, it would be the kind of guy who shows up two hours late to a party, drops a jar of pickles, and then spends the rest of the night explaining how The Exorcist could’ve used more sand. Marketed as the big horror breakout from the United Arab Emirates — and directed by Tobe Hooper, a man once synonymous with revolutionary horror — Djinn instead arrives like a puff of dry, uninspired air from a haunted HVAC system.
Shot in 2011, shelved for years, and finally dumped into the cinematic ether in 2013, Djinn is less a film and more a cultural shrug. It wants to be modern. It wants to be scary. It wants to combine Arabic folklore with slick Western horror stylings. What it ends up being is an 82-minute pile of genre clichés, awkward pacing, and the kind of digital cinematography that looks like it was filtered through a wet napkin.
Let’s be honest: Hooper’s track record after 1985 is spotty at best. He became the Nic Cage of horror directors — you never knew if you were getting Texas Chain Saw or Crocodile. And Djinn, tragically, is the kind of movie that makes Crocodile look like a misunderstood masterpiece.
The Premise: Evil Lives in the Airbnb
We open with a flashback in a creepy fishing village. A woman has just lost her child, and instead of therapy or a glass of wine, she gets haunted by a black-smoke spirit and vanishes into thin air. Then we fast-forward to the present day: an Emirati couple, Khalid and Salama, return from the U.S. to live in a brand-new, high-rise luxury apartment built — surprise! — on the site of the very same haunted village. In horror movies, real estate developers are always doing this. Graveyards, cursed villages, burial grounds, the ruins of ancient demon resorts — anything for a view of the bay.
The couple is trying to recover from the loss of their infant son. So naturally, they decide the best place to heal is a giant, echoey apartment where the lights flicker for no reason and the neighbors look like they came straight from the casting call for “Creepy Bystander #1.”
Things escalate. There are whispers in the walls, random shadows, and — because every horror movie post-2005 legally requires it — creepy baby monitor sounds. Salama begins to suspect that something is off. Khalid acts like a jerk with the emotional intelligence of a seat cushion. And before long, people start dying, disappearing, and being stalked by something that may or may not be a supernatural smoke monster with a grudge.
The Djinn: Smoky, Vaguely Moody, Completely Underwhelming
So what is this entity haunting the couple? A djinn. Not the Robin Williams type. We’re talking jinn of Arabic folklore — shape-shifting spirits that can be tricksters, protectors, or straight-up vengeful demons. It’s fertile ground for horror… in theory.
In Djinn, though, the titular entity is less terrifying and more like a grumpy vape cloud with an attitude problem. It drifts around, growls, and occasionally manifests as a woman in too much eyeliner doing the slow-creep crawl toward the camera like she’s auditioning for The Ring, but less committed. It’s unclear what the djinn wants, who it’s targeting, or why it spends most of the runtime hiding in air vents like a passive-aggressive raccoon.
We’re told that the high-rise itself is cursed, but there’s zero consistency to the hauntings. Some people die instantly. Others just get pranked. One poor woman has an encounter with the demon and then literally gets ghosted. The logic is nonexistent. It’s like the djinn is freelancing, unsure if it wants to kill or just screw with your electricity bill.
The Acting: Better Suited for a Real Estate Ad
Khalid (Khalid Laith) spends most of the film gaslighting his wife while making you question how he passed kindergarten. He’s supposed to be emotionally wounded, but he comes off like a guy who’s really annoyed the coffee machine isn’t working. Salama (Razane Jammal) does what she can with the script, emoting panic and fear and confusion, often in the same scene, often without the help of proper lighting or sound design.
Their chemistry? Imagine two mannequins arguing about IKEA furniture. You’ll get more sparks from a toaster in a bathtub.
And the side characters? They’re filler. Generic neighbors. Creepy maids. Mysterious elevator ghosts. The security guard who knows something but decides to share that knowledge after people start dying. The acting ranges from “serviceable” to “who bribed you into this cast?”
The Horror: Tame, Lame, and Shamefully Generic
Djinn is a horror film where the scariest thing is the runtime. It has all the elements: dark corridors, distorted faces, loud violin stabs — and yet somehow none of it lands. It’s a jump-scare graveyard. The pacing is glacial. There’s no suspense, no mystery, no sense of dread. You could cut this movie up into pieces, shuffle them around, and you’d get the same effect: a slow, directionless slog toward a whimpering climax that resolves absolutely nothing.
The film has the aesthetic of a 2003 PC game cutscene — glossy, cold, and totally divorced from anything resembling human emotion. Hooper’s direction is barely there. It’s like he wandered onto set, yelled “Action!” once, then sat in the corner eating hummus and reminiscing about the ’70s.
The Message (We Think?): Don’t Trust Elevators, or Developers, or Possibly Smoke
There’s an attempt here to blend traditional Arab folklore with modern horror tropes. That’s admirable. But the execution is so bland, so flavorless, that it feels like a missed opportunity — like someone trying to cook a gourmet meal using expired Lunchables.
And then there’s the twist. Because of course there’s a twist. A twist that tries to recontextualize everything you’ve just watched but instead just raises more questions and flips the bird at any attempt to make the story coherent. It doesn’t land. It doesn’t even walk. It limps across the screen and dies of shame somewhere around the closing credits.
Final Verdict: 1 out of 5 Haunted Thermostats
Djinn is a horror movie made with the energy of a man cleaning his attic. Tobe Hooper deserved better. The lore deserved better. Hell, the audience deserved better. It’s a slow, awkward stumble through dusty clichés, featuring a villain that couldn’t scare a toddler and a plot so thin it needs a multivitamin.
Watch it only if you’re a completionist of Hooper’s career, or if you’re doing a film school thesis titled “When Horror Directors Give Up.” Otherwise, close the blinds, blow out the incense, and avoid this sandstorm of suck.
