This film looks good, I enjoyed Liane Balaban as Mary, and all is perfectly fine for most of the film, but......
*********** Many and Serious Spoilers ***********
From the beginning, this film seems geared up for the supernatural, so that the final revelation (it was Shane in a costume all the time) makes a nonsense of all that has gone before....
Okay. I'll buy the tree spelling MARY at the start it was Shane in a tree hanging down some paper cut-outs to make a shadow, for some reason (well, he is mad). And I'll allow his unlikely plan to kill her dad - go to an intersection miles from her home, hope he's coming, and driving at speed, jump in front of the car, avoid being killed,and cause a fatal crash. He performs a similar trick later with the two girls, after presumably pressing his ear against the car window, on tenterhooks for Mary's next wish, smarting after failing to give her a winning lottery ticket or a blue gobstopper in the shop (he may have missed those wishes, although with his bionic ears that would be surprising). And I'll even allow his ability to wander around in full Wisher garb, in the background on a television report, dodging from tree to tree on the school lawn populated by hundreds of kids, outside cafes, to only be noticed by Mary and much, much more but why, oh why, and please somebody involved with the film or the script contact me, did the movie downloaded at the end have footage of the nutcase-only-thinks-he's-the-wisher approaching the house and attacking Mary on the lawn. Please it's disturbing me that this could get passed the script stage, and that people do not seem to have noticed it.
I shall have to go through the DVD with my finger on the still button, looking for a frame or two craftily inserted, and designed to render the audience insensible to the incoherent plot. A lazy scriptwriter's dream.
*********** Many and Serious Spoilers ***********
From the beginning, this film seems geared up for the supernatural, so that the final revelation (it was Shane in a costume all the time) makes a nonsense of all that has gone before....
Okay. I'll buy the tree spelling MARY at the start it was Shane in a tree hanging down some paper cut-outs to make a shadow, for some reason (well, he is mad). And I'll allow his unlikely plan to kill her dad - go to an intersection miles from her home, hope he's coming, and driving at speed, jump in front of the car, avoid being killed,and cause a fatal crash. He performs a similar trick later with the two girls, after presumably pressing his ear against the car window, on tenterhooks for Mary's next wish, smarting after failing to give her a winning lottery ticket or a blue gobstopper in the shop (he may have missed those wishes, although with his bionic ears that would be surprising). And I'll even allow his ability to wander around in full Wisher garb, in the background on a television report, dodging from tree to tree on the school lawn populated by hundreds of kids, outside cafes, to only be noticed by Mary and much, much more but why, oh why, and please somebody involved with the film or the script contact me, did the movie downloaded at the end have footage of the nutcase-only-thinks-he's-the-wisher approaching the house and attacking Mary on the lawn. Please it's disturbing me that this could get passed the script stage, and that people do not seem to have noticed it.
I shall have to go through the DVD with my finger on the still button, looking for a frame or two craftily inserted, and designed to render the audience insensible to the incoherent plot. A lazy scriptwriter's dream.