The Horror of Having Wishes and No Brain Cells
Ah, Wish Upon — a film that poses one of life’s most important philosophical questions: What if the Monkey’s Paw met a high schooler with TikTok-level decision-making skills? Directed by John R. Leonetti, the same man who brought us Annabelle (so, you know, he has experience in making inanimate objects less scary than IKEA furniture), this 2017 supernatural thriller is what happens when a cursed artifact meets a cursed script.
At its core, Wish Upon is about a teenage girl, Clare Shannon (Joey King), who discovers a magic Chinese music box that grants her seven wishes. Unfortunately, every time she makes a wish, someone close to her dies. You’d think after the second corpse, Clare might start connecting dots — but this movie has other plans. Instead, it gives us 90 minutes of increasingly stupid decisions, CGI demons that look like rejected Goosebumps extras, and dialogue so clunky it should come with subtitles in case you mistake it for parody.
The Plot: Behold, the World’s Dumbest Cautionary Tale
The film begins with a flashback of Clare as a child witnessing her mother’s suicide. Trauma? Check. Emotional baggage? Check. Predictable setup for future poor choices? Double check.
Fast-forward to teenage Clare, who lives with her dumpster-diving father (Ryan Phillippe, who looks like he’s wondering how he ended up here instead of a Cruel Intentions reboot). One day, while scavenging for trash, Dad finds a mysterious Chinese music box that looks like something you’d find on Etsy under “haunted but make it cute.”
He gives it to Clare — because when your daughter’s struggling with grief and social isolation, the best gift is a cursed object written in a language no one can read. Naturally, Clare starts making wishes. First, she wishes for her school bully to “rot.” And she does! Quite literally. It’s gross, it’s weird, and it sets the tone for a movie where bad taste isn’t just in the writing — it’s on everyone’s faces.
Then, her dog dies. Then, her uncle dies. Then, someone else gets decapitated. And Clare? She keeps wishing! She’s the kind of protagonist who could find an exploding toaster and say, “Maybe I’ll just toast one more slice.”
Soon, she’s wishing for wealth, popularity, and love — basically every cliché from a YA fanfic that got possessed by the spirit of Final Destination. Each wish grants her exactly what she wants but costs someone else their life. And somehow, Clare’s reaction to this mounting body count is a mix of mild annoyance and Tumblr-level brooding.
By the time she’s indirectly responsible for multiple deaths, including a woman getting her hair caught in a garbage disposal (which is, admittedly, the most creative use of kitchen equipment since Saw), Clare’s priorities are still centered around popularity and boyfriend material.
Character Logic: Horror’s Darwin Awards
Let’s get one thing straight: every character in Wish Upon deserves a Darwin Award.
Joey King, bless her, tries her best. She gives the role everything she can, but there’s only so much an actor can do when the script requires her to make seven consecutive catastrophic choices. It’s like watching someone play horror-movie Jenga — you know it’s all coming down, but you can’t look away.
Her friends (Sydney Park and Shannon Purser, Stranger Things’ Barb in witness protection) serve mainly as exposition delivery systems and future corpses. Ryan Hui (Ki Hong Lee) is the obligatory love interest who exists to translate the box’s inscriptions and provide moral clarity that Clare ignores like a pop-up ad.
And then there’s Ryan Phillippe as Clare’s father, a man who dumpster dives by day and plays saxophone by night — presumably because the writers threw darts at a list of character quirks. His character arc is basically: “embarrassing dad, minor jazz renaissance, headless corpse.”
The real MVP, though, is the demon — who must be having the time of its unholy life watching this girl make one dumb wish after another. If demons kept journals, his would read: “Day 3: Still pretending to be a music box. Girl wished for popularity. Humans are wild.”
The Death Scenes: The Devil Has ADHD
For a film built on a “wish-comes-with-a-death” premise, you’d expect the deaths to be spectacular. Instead, Wish Upongives us a series of Rube Goldberg–style accidents that look like they were designed by an overworked intern at Final Destination Inc.
One woman gets her hair caught in a sink. Another falls down an elevator shaft. Someone else is impaled on a garden statue. It’s less “terrifying” and more “OSHA violation.”
The film can’t even commit to making these scenes consistent in tone — sometimes they’re gruesome, sometimes they’re slapstick. The demon’s method of killing feels like it’s trying out different hobbies: plumbing, carpentry, modern art. By the end, you half-expect someone to die from tripping over the script.
The Themes: Consumerism, Karma, and Cluelessness
There’s an attempt here to say something profound about greed, materialism, and the human cost of selfish desires — but that message drowns under the weight of melodrama and product placement.
The moral lesson seems to be: “Be careful what you wish for — especially if you’re a teenage girl in an American suburb.” But in practice, it plays like, “Make seven wishes, ruin everyone’s life, and still get to die looking fashionable.”
Even the supernatural rules are unclear. The movie tries to establish lore about Chinese curses and ancient demons, but it feels like the writers just skimmed Wikipedia at 2 a.m. between takeout orders. If this music box is ancient Chinese evil, why does it look like something sold at a Pier 1 clearance event?
Direction and Style: The Real Curse is Pacing
Director John R. Leonetti has one trick — flickering lights and moody slow zooms. He milks them like they owe him rent. Every scare is telegraphed, every buildup predictable, and every jump scare less “BOO!” and more “oh, sorry, did we wake you?”
The film’s pacing is bizarre — long stretches of nothing punctuated by sudden deaths that feel both random and unearned. It’s like someone tried to make The Ring for people who think horror should never interrupt their Instagram scroll.
Even the color palette is confused — part Lifetime movie, part CW drama, part funeral home lighting catalog.
The Ending: Groundhog Day for Idiots
After six wishes and six corpses, Clare finally realizes that the box might be bad news. (Congratulations! Only took 90 minutes and a full morgue.) She tries to fix things by wishing to go back to the day before her father found the box — essentially undoing all the chaos.
But of course, the box gets the last laugh. Clare gets hit by a car, the demon claims her soul, and the movie ends exactly where it began: with the audience wishing for their own merciful deaths.
The mid-credits scene teases that someone else might find the box — a setup for a sequel that, thankfully, never materialized. Apparently even the demon decided it was too tired for another round.
Final Thoughts: The Monkey’s Paw Called — It Wants Its Dignity Back
Wish Upon isn’t just a bad horror movie — it’s a masterclass in how to waste potential. With a stronger script and better direction, it could’ve been a clever morality tale. Instead, it’s a high school soap opera with occasional fatalities.
Every time Clare makes a wish, you can feel the audience collectively losing IQ points. By the end, you’re not scared — you’re just impressed that something this dumb was made by adults.
Still, in a twisted way, Wish Upon is fascinating. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a cursed chain email — so bad, you can’t help but pass it on.
Final Rating: ★★☆☆☆
(Two out of seven wishes — one for Joey King’s commitment, and one for the mercy of the credits finally rolling.)
