Wishmaster

Wishmaster (1997) is Robert Kurtzman's horror feature, and you can watch it online on iFILM. A tipsy crane operator drops an ancient statue, it shatters, and out of a fire opal slips the Djinn, a demon who has waited centuries for someone to wake him.

The premise is cruel and simple. The Djinn grants any wish but claims a soul for each one, and every word twists back on whoever speaks it: ask for youth and you crumble to dust, ask for riches and you pay in blood. To tear open a gateway for the rest of his kind, he needs three real wishes from Alexandra (Tammy Lauren), the appraiser whose hands first touched the gem. She runs; he can afford to be patient.

Kurtzman came to directing from special-effects makeup, and it shows, the draw here is the gleeful practical gore and body-warping transformations rather than the plot. Genre icons Robert Englund and Angus Scrimm turn up in supporting parts, and Wes Craven lent his name as producer. It's a nasty, wisecracking carnival ride for fans of nineties horror, low on pretension and high on imagination. Stream Wishmaster (1997) online on iFILM.