Movie Review: 'The Djinn' is a Fun Experiment in Horror Storytelling

The writing and directing duo behind the new IFC Midnight horror movie, The Djinn, gave themselves quite a task. The main character in The Djinn is a 12 year old boy who is mute, he is unable to speak. Played by Ezra Dewey, the main character, Dylan, spends most of the film alone in the apartment he shares with his father, Michael, played by Rob Brownstein. Dad works the late night shift on a radio station which forces him to leave Dylan home alone. On this night, Dylan has discovered a book of magic in their new apartment and he hopes to use it to give himself a voice for the first time in his life.

This is emotionally fraught because secretly, Dylan believes that his inability to speak kept him from saving his mother’s life. Michelle, played by Tevy Poe, took her own life before the start of the story we are being told. Throughout The Djinn, via flashbacks and nightmares, we see young Dylan witnessing his mother’s death more than once. Each time he attempts to call out to her and each time he fails with the nightmare being brought back by the entity Dylan himself has summoned to give him a voice.

A Djinn is a supernatural creature of Islamic origin. Most Americans or western cultures would recognize Djinn as Genie, as essentially it is a being that is summoned through magic to grant wishes. However, Djinn’s are not always as cuddly and helpful as western stories have made them out to be. In older telling's, wishes granted by genies or Djinn, come with a perilous toll. You may get what you want in your wish but there may be a very serious price to pay.

Dylan takes the risk as the book he found hidden in the closet of his new home informs him that if he follows the rules and can survive the night being set upon by the Djinn, his wish will be granted. But first, the night must be survived. Throughout the night Dylan is visited by corporeal demons of different sorts including a reincarnation of a serial killer recently executed, a former neighbor thought dead, and most terrifyingly, his late mother who is the most frightening of all Dylan’s frightening visitors.

The apartment setting of The Djinn is the only set in the movie. It appears to be just a kitchen/living room, a bathroom and two bedrooms. The way the movie operates in this limited space is a wonder of editing, cinematography and set design. Director’s Michael Charbanier and Justin Powell do a terrific job of using this limited space to create tension and suspense, with Dyan using his innate knowledge of the layout against the various demonic interlopers that come for him during the night.

The script is also clever in creating villains with notable and important limitations. One of the things that so many bad horror movies do is give their villain only a loose set of rules so they can make up what the villain is capable of as they go. That, to me, is cheap and cheating. It’s unsatisfying and it breaks the suspension of disbelief when either hero or villain seem to have any needed capability at hand when the plot calls for it. The makers of The Djinn don’t have a set of rules, ala Scream, but they do have boundaries that are revealed visually throughout the movie and it makes for a believably fair fight between an ancient evil and a little boy.

That little boy, by the way, is terrific. While he is somewhat dragged about by the script, The Djinn would not be as compelling as it is without young Ezra Dewey. Ezra has a great face and a natural, authentic quality. He’s perhaps helped by not being bound by dialogue as he only has to remember movement and his facial expressions. Any child character will engender empathy in an audience but a good child actor makes an impression and Ezra Dewey makes an impression with his natural, physical, gifted performance.

Dewey is aided greatly by actor Rob Brownstein, an acting coach by trade, who delivers a warm and charming performance. The natural rapport of father and son, a pair with a weighty and sad history, is communicated not through exposition dumps but through the natural chemistry of Dewey and Brownstein. I've not seen much of Rob Brownstein before but his nurturing quality and effortless charisma in his brief scenes show me why he makes a good acting coach, he communicates a lot without saying a lot.

The Djinn opens in select theaters and for On-Demand rental on Friday, May 14th.