Broad Green Pictures, Busted Shark Productions,
Joey King, Ryan Phillippe, Ki Hong Lee, Mitchell Slaggert, Shannon Purser, Sydney Park, Elisabeth Röhm, Josephine Langford, Kevin Hanchard, Sherilyn Fenn
Clare Shannon (Joey King) is a school age daughter living with her Dad (Ryan Philippe) who is a collector. Their house is filled with junk he collects from the neighborhood dumpsters to reuse someday for something useful. This is really embarrassing for Clare as her schoolmates constantly harass her for this. In fact, she’s typically being bullied by the cool kids in school. Clare is a misfit. But on his journeys, Dad finds an interesting Chinese music box in the trash, cleans it up, and gives it to Clare as a gift. But this is a very special and evil wishing box which, if you hold it, and make a wish, the wish will come true. Clare starts using the box, but there is more to the deal, and no one can seem to translate the ancient writing on the box. When Clare learns that price that is taken for each wish, she has to try to use all her wits to figure out a way to defeat the demon in the box.
This horror film came out in a time when the theaters are filled with too many sequels of superhero films, and so a decent horror film was a good change of pace and much appreciated. There was a pretty good turnout when I went to see this film, and it seemed the crowd enjoyed it, but there has been a lot of hate for this movie. The film was directed by John Leonetti who also directed Annabelle which is a pretty decent film. I enjoy horror, and though there is some reuse of some of the ideas (after all the evil box movie isn’t new, is it?) it is really well done, and I enjoyed it. It was really creepy, and it has a nice pace. The surprise ending really caught me by surprise, and I really enjoyed the ending. The clever twists and turns were interesting, and though obviously this is low budget, it’s not bad at all. If you’re in the mood for something a little different, give this one a shot.
EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog
