Ben Davis

Joey King stars as Clare Shannon, a teen outcast who’s haunted by her mother’s abrupt suicide and constantly embarrassed by her father’s dumpster diving habits. Her luck changes for the better—and worse—when her father finds her a mysterious Chinese music box. Clare discovers for herself that the box has the power to grant seven wishes. Little does Clare know that with each wish granted, someone known to her dies in a freak accident. With people dying around her and the true nature of the music box being discovered over the course of the film, she learns that her actions have consequences. Or, rather, she would know her actions would have consequences if she would’ve acted upon her mistakes. Wish Upon’s script by Barbara Marshall is an unfinished rough draft of unfocused editing, which in turn, unnecessarily accelerates the narrative into a rushed mess that doesn’t allow the audience to connect with the protagonist’s torment to a believable capacity. A director can only do so much to work with the limitations of the final draft of the script if there are crucial missing elements, but the film is too far gone for anything salvageable. By the second half, Clare becomes obsessed with having the music box, but the film fails to fully sell her insanity of having everything she wants despite its penalties, making her come across as unethically moronic. The idea of temptation, especially from a traumatized teen's perspective, would make a believable catalyst for recklessness. Her life is a misery, so a movie can absolutely make sense for her to make more personal wishes rather than ending world hunger and initiating world peace. But the idea is tossed when it’s replaced with unintentional goofiness. Its redeeming factor is entertainment camp from freak accidents that make Final Destination more sensical. There is little effective scare factor, which is overshadowed by the sheer ridiculousness and seldom thinking of how a character dies. The script displays feeble interest in the seriousness that it comes across as a shallow and unfocused mess with a hidden, yet ultimately and pathetically wasted potential that is just as deeply buried in the dumpster where the music box was found to begin with.