Winnie The Pooh, Bambi, Peter Pan, Pinocchio, Mickey Mouse….now you can add “Aladdin” to the list of Disney characters turned gritty, generic survival horror stories. And before you ask….no, this isn’t part of the Twisted Childhood Universe alongside Blood And Honey and Neverland Nightmare. Similar to Mickey’s Mousetrap, this is just somebody else taking the public domain version of those characters and making a horror film out of it.
And….I’m seriously debating if this is just as bad or worse than The Mousetrap. Like, I—I—I—I—my brain is malfunctioning trying to comprehend what I just watched.
Guys, remember when I called Jeff Wadlow’s directing style that of an amateur ringmaster, where his style is very strict, heavily limited, feels purposefully boxed in with little breathing room? I might need to take that back because Brett Bentman outdoes ALL of that creative suffocation with his own. Bentman’s direction is so aggressively clamped shut and he seems to take a weird sense of pride in not risking even an accidental brush with atmosphere; everything feels like a self-restrained visual straightjacket despite the twinge of obligatory restraints pouring out of every facet.
You guys know I’m normally ok with production designs that normally stay secluded in one single location, mostly because of how the very reality of such crowded claustrophobia will force people to get creative behind the camera. I wasn’t able to find who did the production design for this but whoever it was couldn’t do that and make it work. Putting aside how clear it was that they couldn’t make any mess in the locations they were filming in, the setting feels too sparse for what little characters they do have with all the vast swathes of empty space neither creating an identifiable atmosphere nor serving the story beyond just….giving us a location for the conflict to occur. Neither the scope and scale actively work in tandem with the other because the worldbuilding is so inconsequential since we’re in the modern day; so the film can’t even visually commit to its own one-sentence elevator pitch.
Just purely from a presentation standpoint, the film looks like it has had a stroke. The budgetary constraints are almost infuriating and it really brings new validity to the term ‘low-budget’ considering how airless much of anything here is and that’s not getting into immediate and smothering its effect is. Yes, it’s aware of its limitations and stays in its lane but that’s nothing to be proud of when the end result is this pretentiously dry. By law of averages, Bradley Glazer’s camerawork is broadly….fine, nothing more or less. His cinematography checks the bare minimum boxes: adequate framing that keeps actors centered but rarely creates visual interest, passable spatial awareness that at least prevents viewers from getting disoriented in the cheap sets, and just enough variety in angles to avoid complete monotony—just textbook cinematography 101 that ultimately does nothing to enhance the mood.
Editing has little to no sense of momentum but otherwise, is also….meh.
Almost everything about the pacing lurches between glacial stillness, interminably lethargy to the point of molasses or is banking on such low energy that you start to get restless, especially when the overall runtime is only an hour and 23 minutes; that is inexcusable. Visual effects actually drove me up the wall for how shamelessly cheap the integration of AI was—yes, they used AI for basic flashbacks, screen effects and transitions. As someone who constantly hot-potatoes between reasonably leery and cautiously optimistic on the subject of AI usage, this is just another nail in that coffin. Much of the makeup is basic and remedial even when things get bloody, the film keeps pulling the plug on tension and they don’t even build it up relatively well and the kills might as well be second-hand embarrassment. They’re extremely basic, awkwardly staged, taking place entirely off screen or any combination of the three. It’s also asinine how lopsided the tone is; instead of embracing what could have been some campy, B movie charm, we get painfully dull melodrama on par with the other TCU installments only with not a single moment betrays self-awareness or playfulness that might have elevated this mess into….maybe cult territory.
I would get mad at Simone Cilio for not actively matching his musical composition with the general vibe of what you’d expect out of a film like this…..but I’m annoyingly kind of torn. Because the Italian film composer’s Persian/Arabic-inspired style concoction does help the film stand out; it’s easily the film’s lone saving grace but A. it’s disconnected from the action on screen, which bears little resemblance to the Aladdin-mythos, B. most of the tracks blur together after a while, lacking distinctive themes or motifs to anchor specific scenes, and C. even that starts to get monotonous and tiresome. The consistently subpar and uninspired sound design follows the same downward trajectory as everything else in this production, costume design might as well be completely ineffectual with how bland and generic they are and that MPAA rating? Christ. Honestly, the R-rating almost feels like a cheat code because it’s like they could’ve very easily chose not to do it. It’s bloody, yes, but in that sanitized, half-hearted way where every potential moment of genuine horror gets neutered before it can leave an impression. Just like how Tarot was a hard PG rating where they constantly pulled away from the kills, this film teases violence it never delivers, existing in that frustrating limbo where it’s too tame for horror enthusiasts but also not graphic enough for casual viewers—essentially rendering the R-rating a marketing ploy rather than an artistic choice.
So I admit I had to strain myself a little to find some redeeming qualities within this cast because they made it too easy to dunk on and criticize. Everyone feels stilted in how they interact with each other, everyone looks awkward or uncomfortable and nobody shares any chemistry here. Keep in mind, there’s only four actors total here so the margin for error is much higher than average. 60% of the dialogue exchanges are actively circling the drain around generic platitudes or sheer nothingness while the other 40% strain to come up with anything resembling sophisticated and character-wise, there hardly are any. Everyone is just a complete cipher with no identifiable quirks or personalities to help one stand out from the other.
Billy Blair and Indira Starr might not understand the assignment but they feel like the only ones actively trying here; the former speaking every line like its somehow the most important thing in the world and the latter having more believable range she gets possessed. Jonah Lewis just exists with all the presence and purpose of a department store mannequin and Devanny Pinn…..oh boy. I—I—I can’t mince words here; I can respect her for trying to find range—and to be fair, she’s more bearable to watch than Tasha DeCosta in Predator World—but as the lead, she is not up to the task, delivering either blank-faced confusion or overplaying it to soap opera levels with no in-between.
So allow me to preface and truncate this: the original Arabian Nights story of Aladdin boils down to this—a sorcerer tricks Aladdin into retrieving a lamp from a cave. Trapped inside, Aladdin uses a magic ring to summon a genie who helps him escape with the lamp. At home, his mother unwittingly releases a more powerful genie from the lamp. Aladdin wishes for wealth and the Princess’s hand. The sorcerer steals the lamp, but Aladdin recovers it and lives happily ever after. This is important because this story does next to nothing to adapt that into a proper horror format. Ok, ok, to give it the bare minimum of credit, it actually does something interesting with that tale here, turning it into an alternate take of the story where Aladdin is offered as a sacrifice to inhabit the magic lamp, become “the Genie” and forced to grant wishes that inevitably backfire on whoever makes them—depending on who they are and the content of their character, they could be on the receiving end of a classic monkey’s paw scenario.
On that front, it is at least something interesting; beats out Mickey’s Mousetrap and its insipid nothingness of a plot. But even that promising tidbit of a concept gets squandered because it doesn’t stop the narrative from being extremely contrived, formulaic and demonstrably, unforgivably, relentlessly boring. This is just another bog-standard Case No. 7389 of the “four or more random people stuck in a house, releasing a spirit and getting cursed” horror formula and minus the occasional blemishes of supernatural bollocks and the brief veil of unpredictability it tarps over your head, it’s played completely straight like it seems allergic to any kind of fun. Nothing about this is genuine, nothing feels earned or earned back and that’s just another annoying habit of the story either telegraphing too much or not at all with no pattern. It doesn’t seem to catch on how played-out its entire setup is, they could’ve done away with our protagonists megalophobia because it barely tied into the events of the story at all, you can count the relevance of every other scene on the back of your hand—like seriously, what is even the point of highlighting all of this?
I likely would’ve preferred if this was a short film to act as a proof of concept because ninety seconds inside this universe is already over-exposure; anything longer is like parole denied.
Normally, I’d conjure up some witty turn of phrase or constructive observation or something elaborate as a brief recap to sum up my thoughts but I highly doubt I can truly give this one justice. “Aladdin” is simply a cinematic ouroboros, devouring its own tail and eating itself alive, choking down on its own mediocrity in a desperate attempt to justify existing among the other deluge of shitty Disney public domain horror films….and it doesn’t even have the currency to try and pretend otherwise. And the real kicker; the single rotten strawberry on top of this shit-swirled smoothie? THERE’S ALREADY A SEQUEL OUT FOR THIS.
