What You Wish For (2023)

What-You-Wish-For-(2023)
What You Wish For (2023)

What You Wish For

The spoiler issue is still a big problem in film conversation. It’s hitting me hard right now. “What You Wish For,” written and directed by Nicholas Tomnay and starring Nick Stahl, is a movie that I went into relatively cold, which greatly enhanced my enjoyment of the thriller turned horror (is that already a spoiler?).

So, what I’d like to do here is recommend it because Stahl gives such an unassuming performance throughout. He looks like he’s lived through maybe more than one dissolute lifetime already despite being only in his mid-40s with facial features that appear sculpted out of nicotine and alcohol. After getting off of a plane in an unnamed South or Central American country, he checks his phone, silently panics at a text message from someone named “Rabbit” and naively brandishes a $10 bill at some locals hoping for a ride to somewhere deep within the adjacent rain forest. He wants to disappear. But instead of vanishing, he’s met by a driver who transports him into the mountains. He was expected all along; his bro buddy Jack (Brian Groh) is squatting in an idyllic house up there and has invited Ryan to hang around for a while. Both are high end chefs, Jack has landed himself a high-end private dining gig while Ryan’s on the lam from gamblers repped by the aforementioned “Rabbit” who eventually start threatening Ryan’s mom.

Jack needs to drive into town he bought a junk car for convoluted reasons (at least initially) related to his shopping trips and while Jack’s gone Ryan absentmindedly pokes around on Jack’s laptop and discovers that ol’ boy boasts what appears to be several million dollars in various bank accounts. He asks Jack about the gig he’s working, offers himself up as an ad hoc sous-chef, Jack waves him off and later gripes that he’s working for “the worst people in the world.” This confuses Ryan a bit. With all this cash in places like these, what could possibly go wrong?

Well, Ryan finds out, and this is where I run into a problem as a reviewer. Now, if you’re good at guessing games, it may be easy a friend did it over lunch the other day. Thing was, he was joking. The revelation may strike some as faintly ridiculous, at least initially. What works so well about the movie is that it acknowledges this but then makes the premise terrifyingly plausible. The title of “What You Wish For,” adapted from an old adage, implies a “Talented Mr. Ripley”-like situation: Ryan envies Jack’s life without realizing how much deeper its roots are than some trust-fund patrician upbringing. Once that becomes clear to him, dread gives way to despair both his own and mine.

Stahl has always been subtly powerful as an actor, he communicates roiling emotional distress beneath an often inscrutable stillness. This lends new poignancy to Ryan’s eventual flaccidity as he tries on Jack indeed exits the picture about 25 minutes into the film and fails to fit into his new persona(s) while catering to his very specific clients headed by the ever polite Imogene (Tamsin Topolski).

Let it be known, without telling too much, this is what I have chosen: most parts of the film are suspenseful in that way you might remember the scene from Hitchcock’s “Psycho” where Norman Bates pushes Marion Crane’s car and her dead body in the boot into the swamp behind Bates Motel. At first it sinks deeper and deeper but suddenly stops. We hold our breaths for a moment. Why do we hold our breath? We shouldn’t be on Norman’s side right now but we are anyway. It goes like this with Ryan by Stahl. Who remains an extremely skilled cook according to the movie, no matter what anyone says.

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