Seems like there could be some liability issues there.
I haven’t watched this movie but I did the thing where I read everything about it and I just gotta say
spoiler
I am bothered by the whole “haha be careful what you wish for, we’re strictly compliant genies and if you don’t word it super carefully well it’s your fault” because if he wished for “nikki to love him more than anyone else,” they didn’t do that. his wish was not granted in a strictly compliant fashion, because they are explicitly shown to have created an entirely new person to operate Nikki’s body. That’s not “NIKKI LOVING HIM,” that’s an entirely different ass person loving him! If you have to make a new person, you didn’t grant the wish at all! All you did was create the illusion that you did the thing, like fucking chatgpt when it tells you it did work it clearly did not do
A chatGPT style Genie that constantly asskisses but also actively makes the entire situation much worse with every request could actually be a decent premise for a movie.
Yeah, it shouldn’t have broken if it couldn’t actually fulfill his wish.
I haven’t seen the customer service scene so idk what he said but let me tell you if it were me I’d be demanding some managers
Best I can do is let you hear the actual woman you love’s entrapped soul scream on the phone for a few seconds.
I read that and was like “why did he do that” and asked the lying machine and it explained his malevolent intentions but I’m like no why did he do that when that’s really bad customer service???
I will be writing quite the yelp review.
Then your costume jewelry and novelty gift shop is one I would not visit. Hmpf. I’ll take my dollars elsewhere.
You’re looking for Horno’s (Magic Item) Hole!
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Look I just don’t want to get sued when all your friends end up dying horribly!
Definitely one of my many complaints with the horror genre in general. If I had a magic wish stick my wish wouldn’t be some weird thing it would be like “win the powerball.” But then so would everyone else’s probably, rendering that wish worthless. So I and everyone else would have to get more creative with our wishes to try to alter things in ways that are unique to our own benefit. The world would immediately descend into pure chaos. Every single day thousands upon thousands of completely non sequitur changes would happen to and around us at basically all times for no reason at all. It would be a confusing nightmare hellscape. Think of how incredibly surreal that film would be. Then extrapolate this to basically every horror film and you’ll see that the entire genre exists solely to miss the point.
But nah actually I’ll just wish for someone to fall in love with me or something dumb idk I didn’t watch the movie it sounds dumb and horror is a dumb genre because it always focuses on some dumb mundane shit rather than the explore the actual implications of the world that has to exist in order for the dumb mundane shit to happen.
Anyway horror sucks and I’ll die on this hill. Horror movie buffs struggle in the comments below please.
The best horror is one that takes an actual understanding of a societal ill and then makes a monster out of it. And also understands that it is kind of an inherently silly genre and doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Eh, I think the magical stick is just a silly mcguffin to justify the story. It’s more of a fable than an actual scifi or fantasy story. So I’m happy to just suspend my disbelief and enjoy the horror.
Just thought it was funny that a regular ass shop was selling it. Wasn’t even owned by a mysterious bearded old man who disappears after.
Horror is similar to comedy where it’s not meant to be literal, but allegorical. The two genres have a lot of overlap, often two sides of the same coin. Thus, world building isn’t the point of horror, the same way talking animals getting into whacky adventures in comedy isn’t meant to explore the implications of animals who can communicate verbally with humans and vandalize everything.
Foundational to the genre is the unknown, where a wish-granting-magic stick shouldn’t be a thing that exists. Yet here it is, causing all kinds of suffering and chaos. Just like you shouldn’t be able to make a person out of corpses, yet here a creature with its own thoughts and hopes and dreams was created by Frankenstein. When you start getting too far into the world building and trying to make sense of everything, you are no longer in the horror genre. You’ve created a sci-fi or fantasy film with a central conflict.
Think about a sci-fi or fantasy film and do the reverse: leave things unexplained and unknown. What happens? You get a horror film. Using LotR as an example, imagine if Gandalf doesn’t find out what the ring is or he doesn’t exist. Some weirdo Hobbit has the power to dissappear but not before Ringwraiths show up, kill everyone in Bag End, and take the ring. Why this happens is never explained. It seems this cursed ring attracts evil spirits who kill the wearer for abusing its power to turn invisible.
So yeah. The point of comedy is to tell a joke to make people laugh. The point of horror is to explore our fears to make people recoil. Diving too far into explaining everything is like explaining why the joke is funny, making it not funny.
Diving too far into explaining everything is like explaining why the joke is funny, making it not funny.
A joke, or I guess an antihumour joke about this:
Dissecting a joke is like dissecting a frog. Nobody laughs and the frog is dead.
crack wish stick
I wish for a successful proletarian revolution in the imperial core
The monkeys paw twist on that would be easy to predict: the revolution succeeds but it’s led by some ideological faction that sucks, like the shining path guys
Just as many people wish for a successful Christian fascist takeover of the entire universe. Pure chaos
✨suspending disbelief✨
😘
I would have done something equally stupid like:
Tap for spoiler
wish for my cat to come back to life
Oh come on that’s begging for a monkey’s paws situation.
Dang it, that monkey’s paw has made a cat’s paw of me!
Also I’m not actually going to fight anyone I want you all to enjoy the things you enjoy. I’m just being spicy for fun today
It’s an actual magic shop called The Green Man
Interesting.
I’m surprised they didn’t go for the more classic horror trope of just shooting in an old ass antique shop run by a really problematic stereotypical wise Asian guy who’s shop disappears when the guy tries to go back to it.
Visited it with my partner during my birthday weekend on our way to medieval times
They got rune stones and sage bundles and cauldrons and all sorts of shit
I’m an atheist but my partner is into this stuff and they regretfully informed us that they were out of the one wish willows because they had a deal with the prop creators to get extras made but given how popular the movie is the manufacturer might just start making them and selling them direct
I have not seen obsession, but I read the plot summary on wikipedia. To my knowledge, the One Wish Willows were not just a like a magic stick produced by a witch running the shop, but a packaged, mass produced item. The company even had a customer service number. Magic is not only real in this universe, but fully known, marketed, and purchasable at a reasonable price.
If I was the dude in the movie, my first thought after finding out the magic wish stick was real would be to immediately figure out what magic was making this happen and how to harness the full power for myself.
Magic is not only real in this universe, but fully known, marketed, and purchasable at a reasonable price
You’d think so but then it’s a major plot point that it’s not believed to be real
The movie keeps things a bit ambiguous. It’s mostly a mortality fable, a lot of it could be in the characters head.
