Conjuring the Genie (2020)

Aka Evil Genie; aka Devil Djinn

Journalism student Morgan stopped going to school after her dads death.  She returns after a friend urges her to start going to lectures, but her professor doubts she can make up three months of missed work.  Morgan asks for help in getting caught up and the professor decides if she writes a paper about an urban legend, he’ll consider that completion of the past work.  

For a journalism major, Morgan doesn’t seem to know much about research. She looks online for an urban legend for her project. At that point I must have lost consciousness because for the life of me I have no idea how she and her friends ended up doing a genie summoning ritual with a guy named Daniel they didn’t know, and who disappears when things get weird.  Did everyone see that rubber faced genie? Yup, but they shrug it off and go back to their lives.

Unfortunately the genie wants their souls, which requires them to make a wish.  And in true monkeys paw fashion, the wish is going to go horribly wrong.  While everyone else’s wish is going sideways, Morgan wishes for her dad to come back. He seems fine after three months of death.  He doesn’t even look bad. They later find that Morgans wish is working because she held the amulet during the ritual. However if she doesn’t recant her wish, all her friends wishes will go very wrong.  Will Morgan recant? Will all her friends turn into weird monsters with no souls?  Will we care?

This isn’t a great movie. The genie is wearing a rubber mask. His mouth never moves when he talks.  Leah, who told a guy she casually dated she was pregnant as a way to keep dating him, wishes she were actually pregnant. Wouldn’t it be a better to wish he loved you? A pregnancy without love is an obligation and she’s on borrowed time until he meets someone else.

Then there is the girl whose hairdresser says she doesn’t have what it takes to be a model. She wishes to be perfect and turns into this doll with a cracked face. What happened? How is that perfection?  It doesn’t make sense.  But I guess it’s a wishing demon so hurrah!

I don’t know what this is supposed to be but I like it

The rubber mask of the wishing genie. What is that in the
upper left? It sort of crept into the frame. Is it a camera lens?
A flood light? What is it?