Lisa and Max are a happy young couple, buying their dream house together, in love, and everything is going great until Max is in a motorcycle accident and is paralysed from the waist down. Three years later and the couple are locked in a legal battle with the company that made the break pads for his bike that they believe is the cause of the accident. Max has grown increasingly cold to Lisa, bitter and resentful about the accident, he transfers his own feelings of inadequacy onto Lisa, making wild accusations about her cheating on him and only being with him to make some money from the legal action. Lisa has other problems too, their lawyer Steven is falling in love with her and seeing how Max treats her, thinks he can perhaps steal her away from him. Steven is trying to come up with a new strategy to use against their extremely resistant legal opponents but seems more concerned with getting in Lisa’s pants, giving her a small box as a gift and trying to kiss her. She drops the box in surprise and a secret compartment reveals a red jewel – oh no!! Lisa picks it up and gets a strange picture flash through her head of a demonic creature surrounded by fire. She excuses herself and leaves, and Steven puts the jewel in his wall safe until he can get it appraised. That night the inevitable appearance of the Djiin disturbs Steven who demand to know who or what this creature is, the Djiin uses this as Steven’s wish and then relieves him of his face so that he can take on Steven’s identity and go in search of his ‘waker’. He must grant her three wishes so that he can unleash his hellish demonic evil upon the world.

At home Lisa and Max find their relationship becoming increasingly frayed, Lisa simply wants things to go back to the way they used to be but Max can’t accept it. Their moment alone is interrupted by the newly Steven-ified Djiin who claims to have a brand new plan for solving the legal dispute. Lisa goes with him to his office and he persuades her to wish for him to solve the case, he does so in novel fashion, having the opposing lawyer sign an agreement to a $10 million settlement while disfiguring and shooting himself. The two of them go to dinner that night (Max stays at home to sulk) and the Djiin has it so easy this time as Lisa makes her second wish, saying she wished Max could walk again. Max is up and walking in no time but still acting cold towards Lisa, who finds herself being drawn towards Steve/Djiin more and more. The next night she goes to Steven’s place and after backing away from another near-kiss between the two of them, wishes that she could just love him for who he truly is. The Djiin is taken aback by this request and makes her leave, and is then contacted by others of his kind waiting to be released into the world upon the granting of the third wish. They demand to know why the Djiin hasn’t granted it yet, and he explains that she wished to love him as he truly is, but love is not something you can force upon a person and that a paradox has been created – only she can fall in love so therefore only she can grant this wish, ooooookay. To make matters worse, an angel known as ‘The Hunter’ has been awoken from his centuries-long sleep and armed with a sword must seek out and kill the Djiin’s ‘waker’ before the third wish can be granted. The Djiin must find a way to tear Lisa and Max apart, prevent The Hunter from finding her, and try to understand human love and ultimately capture her heart.

I kid you not, that’s the plot! This should have been called Wishmaster 4: The Djiin In Love as the Djiin is almost cast as a sympathetic character, needing to gain the love of a mortal woman before he can take over the world. It’s a flimsy premise at best and raises some questions, like how the Djiin can’t make people fall in love with him considering he can do anything else that is wished for, and why does The Hunter only get released after the third wish has been made? Surely he’s very lucky if its not a wish that can be granted instantly, which would hardly give him enough time to track down and kill the Djiin’s waker! They also ditch the psychic link the Djiin’s waker has with the demon that was seen in the other films, it was convenient for the plot’s sake but doesn’t pay much respect to the film’s origins. The film’s story also totally loses the plot in the last third and the ending is a big unoriginal mess which has been seen in countless other films and actually goes against what the rest of the film would have you believe. There is also once again little of the wit or clever twisting of wishes seen in the first two films, there are a couple of amusing moments but once again its pretty boring straight-forward killing of whoever made the wish, merely an excuse for some cheesy gore effects. Some scenes just boggle the mind in their silliness too, the Hunter character is a big walking cliché – a guy in a long black coat with a sword, and when he and the Djiin square off in a sword duel in a wood, it looked and sounded like a knock-off scene from an episode of the Highlander TV show! The inclusion of the Hunter also confuses matters on who is meant to be the villain, this Hunter wasn’t brought in to kill the Djiin, but to kill the totally innocent waker of the demon, which only makes the Djiin look like a more sympathetic character for trying to stop him! This film seemed very confused, not helped by the dull, formula direction which gives the film a crappy ‘made for TV’ feel it really could have done without.

This crew of actors serves the film a little better than the dumb-assed cast of the previous film, Michael Trucco does a decent job as Steven and the Djiin in human form, he brings a reasonable amount of charisma to the role and is actually capable of emoting, which immediately puts him above anybody in the previous sequel, though the script gives him little in the way of wit. Tara Spencer-Nairn was okay as Lisa too, looking sorta like a cheap Helen Hunt, who isn’t going to win any awards for her acting but is quite pretty and managed to be fairly believable. Everybody else was functional - former soap actor Victor Webster as The Hunter was merely stoic and nothing more, and John Novak returns as the Djiin complete with cheesy costume and silly distorted voice, he’s okay but he doesn’t come close to Andrew Divoff’s portrayal of the character. Also, though the writing leaves a lot to be desired I was pleasantly surprised to find that the story wasn’t half bad in places, especially when considering I was expecting a complete disaster after Wishmaster 3. John Benjamin Martin’s story has many irritating ambiguities and lacks direction, but he at least puts a novel twist on the Djiin, finding himself in a difficult position of needing someone else to grant a wish for him, even if the set up for it was a trifle absurd. With a more experienced writer this concept could have been expanded considerably, though I think the Djiin is the wrong horror creation to be trying to make a sympathetic character. Certainly though, Martin’s heart was in the right place.

After the miserable debacle that was Wishmaster 3 I was expecting another truly dreadful entry in this poor franchise. I was surprised to find that this is nowhere near as bad as the previous film. However, this is still barely worthy of the Wishmaster name and is still way below average, a good idea can only take you so far and this film simply didn’t have the direction, writing, or acting to make a good enough go of it. Not as bad as Wishmaster 3, but that’s like saying being shot in the head is better than being hanged.