Ah, Wishmaster 2. Proof that sometimes sequels don’t just go straight to video—they crawl there on their hands and knees, begging for forgiveness. The first Wishmaster wasn’t exactly Citizen Kane with monsters, but it had enough practical effects, horror cameos, and Andrew Divoff’s scenery-chewing charm to become a cult curio. The sequel, however? Imagine if someone fed the screenplay through a paper shredder, reassembled it in the wrong order, and then filmed it inside a Romanian warehouse with the enthusiasm of a hostage video.
The Plot: Djinn Goes to Jail (And We’re the Ones Punished)
The movie kicks off with a museum robbery gone wrong. A fire opal—the Djinn’s personal AirBnB—is accidentally released when a stray bullet hits it. A burglar named Morgana Truscott (yes, that’s her actual name, not a D&D character sheet) steals the gem, shoots a guard, and flees. Meanwhile, the Djinn immediately starts doing what he does best: granting wishes with all the subtlety of a used-car salesman who moonlights as a serial killer.
For reasons unexplained—because reasons aren’t this movie’s strong suit—the Djinn decides to let himself be arrested. Yes, the ageless supernatural demon voluntarily goes to prison. He strolls into lock-up under the name Nathaniel Demerest, which sounds less like an ancient being of fire and more like the guy who sells life insurance in your strip mall.
From there, the Djinn collects souls by granting wishes to inmates. You’d think this would be a goldmine for creativity, but instead of delightfully twisted ironies, we get limp setups like a gangster wishing for drugs and being beaten up by his own men. Shakespearean tragedy? No. More like prison-yard slapstick.
The Characters: Bland vs. Blandest
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Morgana Truscott (Holly Fields): Our heroine, who spends the movie in a state of perpetual guilt because she shot a guard during the heist. She alternates between screaming at priests, crying about sin, and cosplaying as a medieval monk during her purification rituals. Watching her is like watching someone try to speedrun Catholic guilt on Twitch.
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Gregory (Paul Johansson): A priest and Morgana’s ex-lover, because nothing spices up a demonic soul-harvest like unresolved sexual tension with a man of the cloth. He mostly exists to brood, read exposition, and eventually get crucified inside the opal. Honestly, he got off easy.
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The Djinn/Nathaniel Demerest (Andrew Divoff): Once again played by Divoff, who deserves a medal for committing this hard to a script this dumb. He’s the only one who seems to know he’s in a Wishmaster movie, gleefully chewing through dialogue like, “Your soul is mine!” while wearing prosthetics that look like they were ordered off eBay.
Everyone else is window dressing: prisoners, casino patrons, mobsters, and one unlucky warden who proves that in this universe, HR departments don’t exist.
The Setting: From Jail Cells to Slot Machines
The movie bounces between three main locations:
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A prison, where the Djinn collects souls while apparently auditioning for Oz: The Fantasy Edition.
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A church, where Morgana prays, cries, and does penance like she’s angling for sainthood in speed mode.
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Las Vegas, where the Djinn finally realizes casinos are basically wish-granting machines for drunk tourists anyway.
None of it feels connected. The transitions are clunky, the pacing is off, and the stakes feel lower than a Sunday bingo game.
The Horror: Discount Twilight Zone
The original Wishmaster at least had the decency to showcase imaginative kills. A wish gone wrong could be gruesome, ironic, even darkly funny. Wishmaster 2, however, treats its wish sequences like afterthoughts. A gangster wishes for drugs and gets beaten up. A warden makes a vague request and gets murdered. A gambler makes a wish at the casino, and… well, something happens, I guess?
By the time the Djinn is harvesting souls en masse in Vegas, the film is so lazy it just waves its hand and declares “yep, souls collected” without showing much of anything. That’s not horror—it’s paperwork.
The Theology: Sin, Guilt, and Facepalms
One of the movie’s running themes is Morgana’s guilt for killing the museum guard. This guilt becomes central to her eventual “purification,” since apparently only a pure soul can banish the Djinn. Cue endless scenes of Morgana weeping in front of altars, confessing her sins to Gregory, and performing penance rituals that make The Da Vinci Code look like a documentary.
It all culminates in her wishing the guard she killed back to life, which magically purifies her heart. This apparently resets the board and lets her banish the Djinn with an alchemist’s chant. So the takeaway is: murder is fine as long as you cry hard enough later.
The Djinn’s Master Plan: Bureaucracy From Hell
In this installment, the Djinn needs 1,001 souls to unlock the big apocalypse. Not 1,000. Not a nice round number. 1,001. Which makes it sound less like a prophecy and more like a customer loyalty program. Collect 1,001 souls, and the next coffee is free!
The problem is, the movie never conveys the enormity of this quest. We see him collect a few dozen souls in prison, then suddenly he’s in Vegas acting like he’s almost done. Did he get the rest off-screen? Did he bulk-order them on Amazon? We never find out.
Dark Humor Highlights
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The Djinn letting himself be arrested. Because nothing says “master of cosmic evil” like voluntarily submitting to cavity searches.
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Morgana’s purification rituals: imagine a Hot Topic clerk doing Catholic cosplay.
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Gregory the priest, who somehow resists seduction by Morgana despite her best attempts to make “confession” sound like foreplay.
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The final battle inside the fire opal, which looks less like Hell and more like a rejected set from Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.
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The alchemist’s magic chant, “Nib Sugaroth Baheim,” which sounds less like ancient Persian and more like a rejected menu item at Starbucks.
Why It Fails: Evil Never Dies, But Sequels Probably Should
The first Wishmaster had a spark of originality—killer practical effects, cameos from horror icons, and a villain who relished his own nastiness. Wishmaster 2 has none of that. Instead, it recycles the concept without the imagination, padding the runtime with penitence montages and prison politics.
Andrew Divoff does his best to hold it together, but even his gleeful line deliveries can’t save a movie that feels like it was written during a lunch break and filmed over a weekend.
Final Verdict: Be Careful What You Wish For
Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies proves that evil may not die, but creativity certainly can. The Djinn deserved better than a script this lazy, characters this bland, and effects this uninspired. It’s not scary, it’s not clever, and it’s barely coherent.
By the time the credits roll, you don’t feel like you’ve survived a horror movie—you feel like you’ve sat through detention.
