Zombified_660 Wishcraft is funny, enjoyable and at times quite tense. It's a slick well made movie that will appeal greatly to anyone in to teen Horrors. The dialogue is snappy, the characters are funny without being too cheesy or caricatured, and the plot is well written.However, some of the movie didn't sit right. For one someone obviously took offence at one or other of the incredibly tame death sequences (most in fact cut away ages before anyone dies anyhow) or the fact that someone gets called a 'mother****er' at one point because it got an 18 certificate despite a sum total of about only 10 or 15 seconds of on screen violence and one swear word. I've seen harder 12s. I feel a lot of people will avoid it imagining it to be more hardcore than it is, or buy it expecting a horror-show and be disappointed.That's part of what happened to me. I saw 30 seconds of this on Sci-Fi one night, which was enough to make me check it out, and as a movie I enjoyed it greatly, but I felt the horror element was way too light to really think of it as much more than a teen comedy with horror elements. Most of the movies I normally watch are a lot more intense than this, and I was under the impression from the part I saw that this would at least sit next to Scream in terms of scariness and horror, if not going the full Halloween/Fri 13th slasher hog, but it really is much more comedy thriller than slasher movie.As such it's really entertaining, but I can't help feeling that it'll disappoint those seeking anything more. I don't think it helped I watched The Convent the night before which is just as funny but delivers hardcore gore, less asinine teens and real scares to boot. Wishcraft's a cool film, and firmly recommended to the more relaxed horror fan, but those who crave insanity will probably find it slow-paced and too user-friendly.

Paul Andrews Last night where I live in the UK there was a big thunder storm & torrential rain. Great, I thought, thinking this was a perfect opportunity to watch a good horror & soak up the atmosphere it being a dark, stormy, rainy night. Unfortunately instead of a good horror I ended up watching the abysmal Wishcraft... Wishcraft starts with various moody close-ups of someone writing a letter on an old typewriter, writing an address out on a package & affixing a stamp to it, it turns out the package is for Brett Bumpers (Micheal Weston) the class dork at Martin Van Buren High School. Brett opens the package to find an old looking box in which is contained an ancient severed Bull's penis & the attached letter that says he can make three wishes which will come true, understandably Brett is highly sceptical & throws it in the nearest bin. Brett tells his best, & only, friend Howie (A.J. Buckley) who convinces him to give it a try & make a wish. Brett wishes that a blonde babe named Samantha Warren (Alexanda Holden), whom he has a crush on, would ask him to go to an upcoming school dance. The next day at school Samantha does indeed ask Brett to the dance which annoys her stud boyfriend Cody (Huntley Ritter). Brett & Samantha attend the dance together but when over Samantha tells Brett that they should go back to their normal relationship, also that night Jimbo (Charlie Talbert), a classmate of Brett's, is decapitated on a golf course... Brett uses his second wish to make Samantha fall in love with him which antagonises Cody even more & puts a strain on his friendship with Howie as Brett's life starts to spiral out of control, & the small matter of a psycho killer running around keeps rearing it's ugly head as more of Brett's classmates die & Detective Sparky Shaw (Meat Loaf as Micheal Aday) is determined to catch those responsible...Directed by Danny Graves & Richard Wenk I thought Wishcraft was a pretty awful film. The script by producer Larry Katz is predictably at fault, whoever heard of a severed Bull's penis being able to grant three wishes? Both it's characters & story are incredibly clichéd too, the dork, the blonde babe, the school bully, the comedy relief friend & the usual investigating police officers. The friends who keep splitting up, a killer who is not as they first appear & all the good guys live to see a sickeningly happy ending while all the bad ones die, yawn. At first Wishcraft tries to convince the viewer that a demon of some sort is responsible for the killings but is revealed not to be the case during the incredibly lame 'twist' ending, the killers motives are worthless, bland & mean absolutely nothing in the sense that the killer more or less just 'felt' like killing some random teenagers as they have no real connection to anyone else for the majority of the film. The plot devices which connect the Bull's penis, the three wishes, the killer & Brett together are tenuous & very simplistic. Not much effort has been put into the important aspects of Wishcraft's story. At the end I felt that the supernatural elements just didn't work alongside the bog-standard teen slasher themes, they never really gel that well. I also have to mention the endings, first the 'exciting' climax when the killer is unmasked & the hero saves the day which is really bad & seemingly had very little thought put into it & the second 'true love conquers all' happy ending afterwards which goes on for a full five minutes, yuck. Wishcraft is also really slow & boring spending far too much time on Brett's magical relationship with Samantha, during these scenes I swore I could have been watch a Disney film as the school nerd gets to date the best looking blonde around & not quite know how to handle it. The gore is severely lacking with only three murders for an hour & twenty odd minutes, apart from Jimbo's death & the eventual demise of the killer there is no blood or gore at all & these two scenes apart Wishcraft is PG stuff all the way, in fact I thought on occasion that Wishcraft was deliberately going out of it's way not to show any of the red stuff at all. Technically Wishcraft is well made & is competent but at the same time it's just so bland, boring, uninteresting & forgettable. Director's Graves & Wenk fail to create any atmosphere, tension, scares, surprises or shocks & Wishcraft ends up having the look & feel of a TV film. The acting is OK for what it is but even Meat Loaf was embarrassed to be in this thing & hid behind an alias. A special mention goes to Alexanda Holden who is a bit of a babe so at least there was something decent for me to look at & she's probably worth an extra star on her own, pity she can't act though. Then again no ones perfect, right? Simply put Wishcraft is a terrible film, it's painfully slow, has no gore, violence or nudity, has instantly forgettable production values & is a blatant cross between Wishmaster (1997) & Scream (1996) which are both a hell of a lot better than this piece of crap. Definitely one to avoid, you'll probably be glad you did. Thank me later...

innocuous A teen horror movie with a limited budget and a lot of over-the-hill TV and movie stars, this movie should be unbearable. Oddly, it is quite enjoyable. It will never win any awards and it does not have the rich mythos of many other B-movies, yet it manages to tie many well-worn clichés from "Halloween", "Scream", "I Know What You Did Last Summer", and a long string of other teen scream movies into a coherent whole.Some of the scenes are done extremely well and provide real shocks, usually without resorting to blood. The film is smart enough to turn to camp when it wants to show a little blood, saving it from being one of the frequent bloodfests we are so often assaulted with.Here a few comments that are spoilers, but which can be enjoyed before or after the movie: SPOILERS AHEAD****************************** First, you just HAVE to see Michael Weston's makeup in the first half of the movie. It looks like it was done by his mother in order to conceal some acne for the prom. The base starts at his hairline and then stops quite abruptly at his beardline. Quite mesmerizing, it gives the impression of someone who was wearing a surgical mask while he was getting a tan.Second, as usual, people who receive three wishes are SO unimaginative in using them, and the main character is equally clueless in this movie. When I was a kid (and completely clueless about the real world,) I often thought about what I would wish for, if given the chance. (I also thought about what I would do if I were the last survivor of a war or plague. Perhaps this explains my personality.) In "Wishcraft" the wishes are for the main character's secret love to "go the Spring Blast with me"; for this secret love to "be madly in love with me"; and for the main character, when confronted with a life-threatening situation, to be "stronger, faster, and tougher" than the villain. Come on!! Get imaginative kid! I'll forgive the first wish, since you were just testing the waters, but you could have wished to "be irresistible to all women," or to have "a magic wallet that is always filled with money," or "to be able to turn invisible anytime I wish"; or to "have the powers of Superman." (In the final showdown, the main character turns out NOT to be "stronger, faster, and tougher" than the villain, who basically cleans the floor with him. I have not figured this part out yet...it is quite inconsistent.) Third, Meat Loaf is just great as the scenery-chewing, comedic relief. He's over the top, but thoroughly enjoyable.Finally, Zelda Rubinstein is just hilarious as the coroner. If I were the detective, I would have been investigating HER for the murders in about two minutes. I really hope that Ms. Rubinstein does not talk this way in the real world.END OF SPOILERS******************************** So, check this out if you have a free rental. Surprisingly, there is no nudity in this movie and the lead actress never shows her you-know-whats. In fact, nobody ever shows any, including her female sidekicks.I give this *** out of *****

tenten76 Is there anyone, anywhere, who doesn't already have an answer (most likely with all sorts of sub-clauses and strict definitions) to EXACTLY what they would wish for, given three chances!???Never mind. For virtually everyone in the movie, the acting and dialogue are brilliant. The entirely natural relationships and deft avoidance of so many easy cliches makes this one of the best 'B' movies I've seen, and a lesson for directors & writers with much bigger budgets."Horror" seems a bit strong in describing Wishcraft. It's no worse than Scream, and not even as frightening - although a couple of scenes ('fake knife' & 'unmasked') are really well done. I didn't expect the revelation towards the end either. The end itself (which can ruin a film) is pretty good too.It's difficult to say more without revealing the movie, and I recommend you see this the same way I did - optimistically, and with a vague hope that it's better than Wishmaster (which it so is).In fact, if they pumped up the soundtrack and had more famous faces, this film would easily be in the same league as Scream, Swimfan and (dare I say it) an average episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.