All too familiar…
Directed by: Tobe Hooper
Written by: David Tully
Starring: Razane Jammal, Khalid Laith, Aiysha Hart, Malik McCall, Paul Luebke
The H-Bomb: Salama (Razane Jammal) and Khalid (Khalid Laith) are a young Emirati couple living in New York, who have never quite gotten over the loss of their infant son, who passed away a year ago. At the suggestion of their therapist, Salama and Khalid decide to move back to the UAE, in order to be closer to Salama’s family.
Upon arriving in Dubai, the two of them move into a luxurious high rise apartment arranged by Khalid’s employer. Almost immediately, Salama feels ill at ease, as the entire place is engulfed in a thick fog, bringing visibility down to almost nothing. She senses something just isn’t right about all this, and there’s nothing her husband can say to ease her mind.
Once Khalid heads off to work, leaving Salama alone in the apartment, things only go from bad to worse. Her female neighbor, Sarah (Aiysha Hart), is an intrusive weirdo, the building’s doorman, Sammy (Malik McCall), has a passive-aggressive creepiness to him, and she’s been seeing this strange, dark apparition crawling around all over the place. Is it simply a figment of her imagination, or something more? Could it possibly have something to do with the fact that the apartment building was constructed on sacred ground, or perhaps it’s related to a secret from her husband’s past?
Djinn… fuck, this is a frustrating one. Frustrating because of the all genuine potential that kind of just gets pissed away. The premise is fantastic on paper, a ghost story based on Middle Eastern folklore about the Djinn, demon-like entities that can possess people, make freakish fucking babies, and are just all around bad news. A horror film set against this most unique backdrop, that was actually produced and shot in Dubai, there is just so much potential, here.
So, why is the finished film so goddamn generic in every way, shape, and form? First, there’s the unique shooting location, which is squandered, because most of the movie takes place inside an apartment building, which looks like the kind of high end, Middle Eastern themed hotel room you might find in Vegas. The scenes set outdoors are filled with so much fog, that the only thing visible is whatever person or object is directly in front of the camera. For all I can tell, this thing could’ve been filmed in Vegas, or Toronto, or where-the-hell-ever. You get to see more of Dubai in fucking Mission: Impossible 4 than you do in the entirety of this movie.
Then there’s the story itself, which, like last year’s Annabelle, basically lifts directly from Rosemary’s Baby, and The Ring, and The Grudge, and pretty much any crappy J-horror remake you can think of that involves an evil female specter going to town and reaping horrible revenge on the living. The sequence in which we follow the spirit’s movement via security monitors, is a direct, blatant steal from The Grudge… and it’s one of the creepier scenes in the film. How fucking sad is that?
If that’s not enough, the script, by David Tully, is so oddly structured in spots. The sequence in which the Djinn curse is explained to us, by characters who don’t appear anywhere else in the film, is shoe-horned in so awkwardly I would swear it was something that was added after the movie was shot, because the producers were afraid us dumb Americans couldn’t be trusted with a little ambiguity. Not to mention, this lame brained sequence goes on for way too long, and totally spoils what was obviously meant to be a major reveal at the film’s conclusion. Imagine if we were flat out told fifteen minutes into The Sixth Sense that Bruce Willis was a ghost… it’s kind of like that. Maybe not as severe, but close.
Djinn is directed by legendary horror helmer Tobe Hooper, who is most famous for the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the original Poltergeist (pathetic that I have to stick the word “original” before both of those titles). When it comes to Tobe Hooper’s filmography, basically there’s the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the original Poltergeist… and then there’s everything else. Yeah, sure, he’s done a few other things I liked (like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Salem’s Lot, and The Funhouse), but most of his subsequent films range from mediocre to borderline unwatchable.
Even though Hooper has made a number of films that are pure dreck (I’m looking at you, Spontaneous Combustion, I’m looking at you, Mortuary), they all have a chaotic energy, a kind of manic edge, running through them that is undeniably his. That energy is nowhere to be found in Djinn. The direction is competent, yet pedestrian to an extreme, so much so, that I would have sworn this was made by whoever the hell directed that shitty Pulse remake, not the director of The Texas Chainsaw Fuckin’ Massacre. Hooper’s made his share of bad films, this is his first generic one.
Now, considering all the shit I’ve dumped on Djinn, what I’m about to say next may surprise you… I didn’t dislike it. I was disappointed to a degree, but, as an average, run-of-the-mill ghost movie, it is perfectly watchable, even entertaining, provided your expectations are kept relatively low. Jammal and Laith do have chemistry together, they are likable, and we do come to care what happens to them. The apartment building is eerie in terms of how vast and empty it is, and there are a few stand out scenes, such as when a frightened Salama dons a head scarf and starts to pray in absolute terror as a shadowy figure on the ceiling creeps up behind her, that manage to build a sense of fear and are legitimately effective.
As a formulaic fright flick, it’s not half bad, and I would even go as far as to say it’s worth checking out, being that it’s now streaming on Netflix. Still, given the premise and the setting, not to mention the director involved, this had the potential to be so much more. Perhaps at some point, another filmmaker, Arab or not, will take this concept and actually make a unique film out of it. As it stands now, Djinn is about as formulaic and forgettable as a haunted house movie can get.
