The Djinn (2021)
We’re expanding our Judgments section this week with another spoiler-free review. As a reminder, we don’t do rating scales with stars or tomatoes or skulls or whatever--just not our thing. Instead, we tell you our thoughts and whether we think something is worth your attention.
Today, we’re talking about the 2021 American supernatural horror film, The Djinn, written and directed by David Charbonier and Justin Powell.
“What Is Done Cannot Be Undone”
Other reviews and ratings for this new indie horror film, released this past May by IFC Midnight, are pretty wide-ranging. With harsh scores of 2.7/5 on Letterboxd and 4.7/10 on IMDB, a very positive 87% critic score and 76% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and a middling 59% on Metacritic, it’s clear that audiences and critics are divided on this one. RogerEbert.com’s Simon Abrams panned the movie, while Crooked Marquee’s Kimber Myers rated it a respectable B+, commending its moral lesson and unnerving execution.
In the fall of 1989, mute, asthmatic preteen (or possibly tween), Dylan Jacobs (Ezra Dewey), moves into a new home with his night-time radio host father, Michael (Rob Brownstein), following an unspecified traumatic event involving his mother, Michelle (Tevy Poe).
Michelle is now absent from their lives, and Dylan frequently dreams of the pivotal moment in which he found his mother in the kitchen of their old home in the middle of the night, crying. Wracked with guilt, Dylan is convinced that she left because of his asthma and muteness. It’s not just an internal concern. He asks his father about it too. But Michael’s reassurances that his son is perfect the way he is, that his muteness isn’t why his mother left, do little to sway the grieving child’s mind. Nightmares of finding his weeping mother that night continue to plague Dylan.
Once they’re moved into a new home, Dylan explores the place and finds a full-length mirror and, hidden in a closet, an old, ominous-looking tome called the Book of Shadows. He skims the first few pages and finds stories about djinn and how to summon one to grant his deepest desire. So, without heeding the book’s warning that the process might take a toll on his soul and without reading the other chapters about what djinn are like and what the whole wish thing entails, our sad, desperate protagonist sets in motion a plan to gain what he wants most, what he believes could have kept his family together: a voice.
It’s immediately obvious that this kid really should’ve read the rest of the instruction manual, including the surgeon general’s warning about how djinn always twist your wish into something terrible; summoner discretion advised.
But when Michael leaves for work that night, Dylan gathers the materials he needs (a candle, some drops of his blood, and the mirror) and performs the necessary ritual to summon the djinn. What follows is a terror-fueled hour in which Dylan fights for his life while trapped inside his house with a monstrous supernatural being bent on destroying him--body and soul. The book promises, if he survives past midnight and snuffs the candle, the djinn will grant his desire. But the book also warns of dire consequences--whether he succeeds or not. But, once he lights the candle, lets his blood drip into the wax, and speaks in American Sign Language his plea for a voice while looking into the mirror, it’s too late to turn back.
The Djinn offers a quiet, tension-filled spin on the classic “be careful what you wish for” cautionary tale, as well as the more modern, “always read the whole instruction manual before you start.” Dylan doesn’t consider the book’s warnings before he acts, and only when the night takes its inevitably sinister turn does he return to the pages to figure out how to fight the monster he’s trapped himself with.
Very often, low budgets can get in the way of good indie horror, but not here. Most of the visual effects are simple and sparse: a bit of smoke, maybe some subtle CGI, and a lot of thoughtful lighting and camerawork. In fact, it’s when more flashy special effects appear toward the end of the story that the movie falters a bit.
For the most part, though, the film actually seems to thrive under limitations. Take, for instance, Dylan’s muteness. The filmmakers appear to have made a decision that, having a mute character as their protagonist, they wanted to minimize all dialogue in the film--the vast majority of it contains no lines at all, signed or spoken. As a result, it has to rely on a more non-verbal storytelling style. Nearly every bit of plot, backstory, and emotional investment occurs either visually or by the subtle sound of Dylan’s breath, the sudden breaking of glass, or the rattling of vents.
Rather than luring viewers in with enticing special effects or trying to make a spectacle of their story’s version of djinn lore, the film focuses on cinematography, lighting, and character. The camera rolls on a long shot, moves through the house, peeking around corners, checking under beds, and all the while ratchets up the tension. The juxtaposition of the dark shadows and bright, at times flourescent, light is often striking.
Albeit with some cheesy directing and some questionable music choices, including one very bad attempt at an 80s montage--in which there are, weirdly, no actual montage shots, just a camera turning slowly around a room--The Djinn manages to communicate all of its information in a classic, highly visual style, reminiscent at times of a silent film. And perhaps it’s our fondness for child protagonists in horror and other coming-of-age stories, but Ezra Dewey absolutely nails his performance as a mourning boy who can’t move on now that his mother is gone, can’t accept that it wasn’t his fault, and fails to understand the weight and terrible cost of his actions.
That said, the film definitely has its drawbacks. We can cut it a little slack on the standard “be careful what you wish for” tropes, but some parts of the story feel a little too stock. We can’t get too deep in the weeds on this criticism because spoilers, but suffice it to say, the core of the film--the repeated scene of Dylan finding his weeping mother in the kitchen--feels like low-hanging fruit, like it was the first idea someone had for this particular moment, so they ran with it, rather than try to come up with something that shows more emotional depth and nuance. Even so, Dewey plays the scene so incredibly well, giving a slightly varied performance each time it recurs, that it still works.
The Djinn is not the right movie for someone looking for a splashy supernatural blockbuster or an action-fueled thriller or a deeply involved mystery or high-minded art horror. But, for those who appreciate quiet storytelling, twisted fables, and atmospheric tension, this story of a grieving boy struggling, and failing, to accept his difference in a world that’s crueler than his father would have him believe is worth a watch.
