- Directed by David Charbonier, Justin Powell
- Written by David Charbonier, Justin Powell
- Stars Ezra Dewey, Rob Brownstein, Tevy Poe
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 22 Minutes
Synopsis
On a quiet summer night in 1989, young Dylan gets out of bed in the middle of the night to find his mother crying in the kitchen. Credits roll.
Fall, that same year, Dylan and his father move to a new house, and we see that Dylan cannot speak. Dylan finds some old atiques in his closet including a dusty old bundle. Inside is a book, “Book of Shadows,” and inside it’s full of magical witch-crafty looking stuff. There’s a spell for a “Wish of Desire.” The old man who used to live in this house died there.
Dylan thinks his problem might be why his mother left them, but his father explains that isn’t true. Dad has to work a double shift, so while he’s alone, he tries the Wish spell. The book explains that it conjures a Djinn who grants wishes but, “The gift that you seek may cost your soul.” At eleven o’clock, Dylan starts the ritual with blood on the candle, then he does the magic words in front of a mirror, only using sign language. “I wish I had a voice,” he tells the mirror. Nothing happens, so Dylan goes to bed.
He dreams about his mother in the kitchen again. This time, she takes something out of a box. He gets up to take a shower. Dylan takes his shirt off and we see he has some kind of major scar on his upper chest; he also uses an inhaler. While he’s in there, black smoke comes out of the mirror he’d used for his spell. Afterwards, Dylan starts hearing things around the house— is he really home alone?
Dylan finally sees it and hides in the bathroom. The Djinn reads the newspaper about a dead convict who was killed in a hit-and-run. It takes his form, except in the mirror, you can see the black, smoky reality. The creature turns on the gas stove and redirects the gas through the bathroom’s heating vent (how?). Dylan smacks the creature with the toilet tank lid and runs out of the bathroom. He still can’t get out of the house though, as the windows appear indestructible and self-healing. Still, he does remember to turn off the gas.
The Djinn next takes the form of the old man who used to live there. There’s a lot of cat-and-mouse play between the two of them until Dylan reads up about Djinns. He needs to blow out the candle after midnight, but it’s not time yet, so the flame will not go out. He needs to survive in the Djinn’s presence for one full hour without dying then he gets his wish, which is likely to be twisted somehow in the usual Djinn fashion.
Dylan sees his mother again, but it’s really the monster, who chases him some more. Dylan once again relives seeing his mother take a gun out of the box and shoot herself in the head. Now we know what happened to her!
It’s only seconds until midnight, and Dylan is ready to blow out the candle when the Djinn walks into the room. It can’t see him, but it hears really well. She gets between Dylan and the candle, so he can’t blow it out! He slices at her ankles, but she grabs and chokes him. He grabs the knife and stabs her again. He sneaks past her as she lay unconscious, but she wakes up and snaps his leg. They have a slow-motion crawling chase towards the candle in the kitchen.
He gets there first and blows out the candle. She turns to smoke and blows away, and Dylan’s injuries are all gone. He still can’t talk, so was it all worth it?
Dylan then goes through the recurring dream with his mother again, but this time, he is able to yell “Mom!” before she pulls the trigger. “Could I have stopped it?” he asks. She shakes her head.
Dylan wakes up when his father comes home, and they hug. The Djinn comes up behind the father and steal’s his ability to speak in order to heal Dylan’s inability to speak. Dylan can talk, but now he has no one to talk to. His father had a career on the radio, which is now over.
Commentary
Dylan’s reactions seem pretty believable for a kid in that situation. He tries to break out a window at one point, but he never tries the door, which is odd. There’s not a lot of talking in this one, since Dylan is mute and alone through the majority of the film.
It’s tense and has a lot of suspense. The acting from Ezra Dewey, as Dylan, is really good. The father seems really likable too, but he’s not in it after the first couple of minutes. The cinematography and sound are excellent, and the lighting— it’s dark in the house, but not too dark. It does maybe feel a little stretched out in places.
It’s has a real downer of an ending, which would be fine in a Twilight Zone episode, but seemed harsh since it happened to a little kid who had gone through so much. The father was also a really nice guy, and certainly didn’t deserve what happened to him.