Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies

Directed by Jack Sholder, Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies follows Andrew Divoff’s malicious djinn as he returns to life after a thief (Holly Fields’ Morgana) accidentally awakens him from his cursed slumber. It’s clear immediately that Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies possesses few elements, if any, designed to capture and sustain the viewer’s interest, as filmmaker Sholder, working from his own screenplay, delivers a low-rent and entirely momentum-free endeavor that lurches from one ill-conceived sequence to the next – with the pervasively unwatchable atmosphere compounded by a total lack of compelling, sympathetic central characters. (Fields’ less-than-accomplished turn as the hysterical protagonist perpetuates the incompetent vibe, to be sure.) And while Sholder has peppered the proceedings with a small handful of agreeable attributes, including Divoff’s enjoyably smug performance and several agreeably brutal kill sequences, Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies is, for the most part, an entirely worthless straight-to-video sequel that makes the far-from-stellar original look like a horror masterpiece by comparison.

* out of ****