Although Maybe It Should

On its own, the original Wishmaster isn’t really a film that screams for a sequel. It has a villain who is decent enough, played charismatically by Andrew Divoff, and the villain could, via various means, be brought back one way or another, sure. But at the same time, any continuations would be a lesson in diminishing returns. As with any horror villain (especially in the slasher-adjacent genres), the more you use the villain the more you use up his (or her) bag of tricks. A sequel works that well dry, especially if your villain is rather one note.

And that is a major issue with the Djinn at the center of the Wishmaster series: he’s very flat and one note. Yes, Divoff plays him well, with a deep voice and a creepy smile, but there’s just not that much to the Djinn beyond that. A victim meets the Djinn, says something stupid eventually, and then the Djinn makes their “wish” a reality. Lather, rinse, and repeat over and over. The first film, with a modest budget, was able to get enough mileage out of the concept to, just barely, fill a feature length film. But with a smaller budget and less creativity, could a sequel possibly hope to be anywhere near as fun as the original (even grading on a curve)?

No, it really can’t. That, more than anything, is what brings down Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies. When all you have is momentum and gore, a smaller budget and a rehash of ideas drains both of those quickly. This sequel only goes to show how creatively bankrupt a sequel can be, going over the same beats of the first film again with a new cast and a new setting but the same old story. Even the Djinn’s goal is the same, meaning we have nothing new or interesting to latch onto this time, just everything from the first film dumber, sadder, and weaker.

Morgana Truscott (Holly Fields) is a burglar. She and her team break into the museum to steal paintings and other treasures, but one of her guys sets off the alarms, alerting the museum’s security. A gunfight ensues and both her guys, including her boyfriend, are killed during the firestorm. A statue of a Persian god is also shot, breaking open to reveal a fire opal within. The fire opal that contains the Djinn. Morganna grabs the gem, but it grows hot and breaks in her hand. She flees with the paintings, leaving the bodies of her crew behind.

While Morganna weeps for her boyfriend, talking to their mutual friend, Pastor Gregory (Paul Johansson), the now free Djinn (Divoff) sets about his business of bringing about the apocalypse. He needs to collect 1,001 souls before Morganna makes her three wishes, ensuring that the plane of the Djinn merges into our world. So he takes the blame for the museum heist, getting himself sent to prison so he can start granting the wishes (and claiming the souls) of everyone within. Morganna, meanwhile, has visions of what the Djinn is up to and she realizes that she has to stop the Djinn, whatever it takes.

To be sure, Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies is absolutely bankrupt creatively. The film doesn’t have any new ideas, instead warming over the story we got from the first film just with a different cast of characters. While their background and attitudes might be different, the story is the same, leaving us with the same beats, done the same way, until we get to the inevitable conclusion where the Djinn gets surprised that a wish he grants screws himself over. If you saw the first film (and why on Earth would you do that unless you run a website like this?) then you know, in broad terms, everything that’s going to happen this time around as well.

What makes it all worse is the fact that the kills in this film aren’t even as interesting as in the first film. While that movie wasn’t exactly genius when it came to setting up kills and making them pay off, it at least had a ton of gore to make it all fun. This film doesn’t have the budget for that, or much else in fact, so its kills are sparse and uninteresting. A scene where a man is forced to “go fuck himself” could have been a bloody and disgusting mess. Instead it’s played largely for laughs, with no blood and no scares. This is emblematic of all of the kills in the film.

On top of that, the acting isn’t that great, either. This film marked one of the biggest roles for Holly Fields, who played Morganna, with the actress largely playing one-off and side characters in TV shows and movies. She brings almost nothing to her character here, playing her with barely any difference between the scenes where she should be happy and those where she should be scared. Johansson isn’t much better, being a glorified soap opera actor who really doesn’t have any style, charisma, or inflection when playing Gregory. Both leads in the film are total bores.

It’s up to Divoff to give this film some juice, but even he can only bring so much. While he still has his creepy smile and his deep voice, which go some way towards making his character interesting, the film gives the actor and his character absolutely nothing to do. He stands around, makes proclamations about how he’s the master of wishes, and then just waits. There’s none of the menace or charisma that he brought to the character the first time around. Frankly, he seems bored in this warmed-over sequel, which I guess explains why he didn’t even bother to return for the next two sequels in the series.

On all fronts this film fails to deliver. It was clear that the first film did just well enough in theaters that production company Artisan Entertainment wanted to cash in however they could with a sequel. Rightly assuming that a shittier version of the original film, with a smaller budget, wouldn’t be able to recapture what little Box Office magic Wishmaster had, they pushed this shitty sequel out to home video. And while it didn’t die there (the film did get two more sequels), it didn’t do much to resurrect the cultural cache of the Wishmaster.

This film blows, and it’s sad to think there’s two more films to suffer through after this. I’m sure we’ll get to it at some point. I mean, hell, I’ve managed to dig through most of the LeprechaunThis film series, starring Warwick Davis, tells of the many murderous adventures of an evil leprechaun always out to get his gold. films. What’s a few more Wishmaster flicks?