The Djinn is the deformed and premature love child between Home Alone and Wishmaster

 

This poster is as entertaining as the movie gets. (Image courtesy of imdb.com)

When directors make movies for the sake of making movies, there's still some semblance of entertainment that comes from it. When directors try to make horror movies for the sake of making a horror movie, often times, it falls dramatically flat. The horror genre of movies is unforgiving and it takes creativity, imagination and a special kind of passion to pull a successful one off, budget be damned. 

The Djinn falls into the category of many lacklustre and unimaginative horror movies before it that shouldn't have been green lit in the first place, let alone released. 

We're as horrified as you, kid, that a movie like this was funded. (Image courtesy of deadline.com)

Set in 1989 (ooh~ ambitious), The Djinn tells the story of Dylan, a mute and asthmatic young kid that moves into a new apartment with his dad after the apparent suicide of his mother (or something like that). After moving in, Dylan finds a book of spells that points to something called the "Wish of Desire" a summoning incantation that calls on a djinn, a powerful demonic Arabian spirit, that can grant wishes, but with a price. 

After Dylan's left alone for the night (for some odd reason that was never specified), he performs the ritual and asks to have his voice back. According to the rules of the spell, Dylan must survive past the stroke of midnight in order for his wish to be granted. 

So throughout the night, it's basically a cat and mouse game between the shade-like spirit that can manifest into the forms of deceased people and this 10 year old kid. Like a deformed and premature love child between Home Alone and Wishmaster, which will never amount to anything in its life and will probably die before it reaches puberty, The Djinn movie was uninteresting, unoriginal and just plain boring.

Normally i'd credit the actors who were in this movie, but part of me wants to keep their identities anonymous to save them the humiliation of having acted in this movie in the first place. 

I'd turn the other way and wait to be shot in the back too if I had to participate in this project. (Image courtesy of Film Threat)

There was nothing overtly interesting about this movie. There were some small, minuscule, insignificant things that pleased us, but overall, it fell flat as a horror movie. 

The spell book's narrator was a nice touch, the retro 80's soundtrack for certain scenes was interesting but horribly misplaced, the kid's acting was sufficient in some scenes, the editing was so-so and the creature designs were kind of alright. It's these tiny little things that made us sit throughout the movie, but other than that, there was very little that made this watchable. 

All in all, Asian Does Horror gives The Djinn 👻👻 ghost emojis out of five.