Review: ‘The Djinn’ splinters the senses

“When we start thinking about things we’re missing, we forget about the things we have,” offers Michael Jacobs (Rob Brownstein) to his son Dylan (Ezra Dewey), who’s just uncovered a creepy book of shadows, made for granting the heart’s deepest desires, in the back of his closet. Born mute, Dylan bears a wicked scar in the shape of a “Y” on his chest — and it appears he has yet confronted early childhood trauma. The Djinn, co-directed by David Charbonier and Justin Powell, the team which also helmed The Boy Behind the Door, burrows itself into the old adage “be careful what you wish for.” While it’s certainly not reinventing the wheel, it is wonderfully unsettling with a superstar-making performance from Dewey. A wildly effective low-scale piece of horror, the film engages with a limited cast and one location; moody cinematography, including one chilling one-shot take, a ’80s synth score, and a grisly monster design (a full-on reveal reminiscent of Insidious), accentuate a masterful story piece.

Michael and Dylan have just moved into a new apartment, where, as we come to learn, the previous tenant died unexpectedly. Michael frequently works long, late-night hours as a radio jockey, perhaps hustling in such a way to forget the tragedy which befell his family. Set in 1989, Dylan has little to preoccupy himself with outside of radio and television, but on one particularly lonely night, he unwraps the newly-discovered, leather-bound book to make a wish: to have a voice. Through a fairly innocuous ritual, that does require a blood sacrifice from a pricked forefinger, of course, Dylan summons up the Djinn to grant him his one wish. The supernatural being wants far more than he bargained for, naturally, and a night of fright ensues.

Dylan must survive until midnight, and only then can the candle, from which the entity was conjured, be extinguished and his wish come true. Terrified and alone, the young boy can’t scream and can’t contact the outside world, as the windows and door are sealed by the monster’s powers and the one telephone is always out of reach. The Djinn also carries a particular power: the ability to assume various human forms — beginning with the visage of an escaped convict who’s picture was in the paper to a photo of the previous tenant to… Dylan’s own mother. The film grips you around the throat and refuses to let go, soon revealing the root to his pain and why he blames himself for his mother’s abandonment. The screen decorates with a suffocating sort of dread, like pushing your hand into a pit of needles, and Charbonier and Powell force your mouth gaping open by the finale. It’s that terrifying.

The Djinn would not be such an exemplary film without Dewey’s nuanced and devastating performance, though. Crushing isolation is as much a player as the demon, or whatever it is, itself. Dylan must, once and for all, confront his past and learn to be grateful for the present if he has any will left to live until daybreak. Simply put, it’s one of the year’s biggest terror treats.

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