Threequel month continues!

I had many criticisms of Candyman: Day of the Dead, the last threequel I covered, but finding positives in it wasn’t hard. There were areas where the film seemed to be trying to make good choices.

If any decent decisions were made in the making of Wishmaster 3: Beyond The Gates of Hell there’s absolutely no sign of them in the final product!

A young student called Diana (A.J. Cook) inadvertently awakens the Djinn, who murders and takes the form of her lecturer (Jason Connery). Using his disguise the Djinn patrols the campus, granting wishes and collecting souls, hunting for the one who woke him.

The Characters

I named a few characters in Candyman: Day of the Dead who I thought were shallow but I also named a few who I thought had some dimension, not enough to be empathetic or even interesting but enough to show that the screenwriters had some knowledge of building decent character arcs.

Almost the entire cast of Wishmaster 3 is shallow. Some have backstories and arcs that just don’t make sense while others are mere slasher stereotypes.

Diana, our protagonist, is traumatized. She blames herself for the car crash that killed her parents. In flashbacks we see that she was a child at the time and her father, who was driving, simply got distracted by her in the backseat. After the crash, her father dragged her out of the car and told her to stay put while he rescued her mother. Moments later, the car exploded with both parents inside.

I’m not a therapist so I won’t frame my opinion of Diana’s guilt not making sense as valid. However, I like to think that my opinion about how Diana confronts this trauma has a lot of weight.

Her boyfriend Greg (Tobias Mehler) tells her countless times that she’s afraid of intimacy and needs to get help. Diana’s arc consists of her defeating the Djinn, rescuing Greg from a similar car crash to her parents’ and finally revealing her love to him. How this helps her to open up and recover from her trauma I have no idea but the film acts as if you should, which is just amazing.

Katie and Billy (Louisette Geiss and Aaron Smonlinski), a couple who’re friends of Greg and Diana, are our supporting characters. They are sassy, crude, sex-obsessed and very hard to watch. If they were in a camp 80s’ slasher they’d just be part of the film’s charm. Since Wishmaster 3’s from 2001 and is devoid of charm, they just add to the film’s repulsion.

The only character that is a little bit intriguing is the professor. Before he’s possessed by the Djinn, he comes across as a warm and witty personality. However, we learn that he has a preference for younger women, specifically those who’re around the age of his own students. He asks Diana out to dinner in a very awkward exchange. He’s not likable of course but way more interesting than the rest of the cast.

As the Djinn, while he’s no Andrew Divoff, he does display a very British charisma that can be entertaining at times.

The Horror

Wishmaster 3 lacks the tongue-in-cheek aura of the first two. It takes itself seriously and expects you to care for the characters and fear the horror they face. The film fails at both.

Most of the makeup effects appear even cheaper than those from the first two and unlike the first two, they’re all supposed to look genuine and disgusting.  I can only think of two instances in the film where the effects looked partly convincing.

The stunt work and fight scenes are surprisingly decent. We get two car crashes, two fights between the Djinn and an angel and a fall from a building. They seem relatively well choregraphed and executed, if only the makeup effects got the same attention.

Is Wishmaster 3 so bad it’s good? Under the influence of the right substance maybe. With a clear head, absolutely not. I just hope the people who worked on it learnt something and used it on better projects.

And I didn’t even mention the bits where the film mercilessly contradicts the lore of the first two. Or the fact that there’re no gates of hell, let alone any travel beyond them. I could go on. I need to stop.

I give Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Hell an indifferent 2 out of 10.