What You Wish For

StarringCinematographyMateo GuzmánEdited byNicholas TomnayMusic byDistributed byMagnet Releasing101 minutesCountryUnited StatesLanguagesBox office$6,279^[1][2]

What You Wish For is a 2023 American thriller film, written and directed by Nicholas Tomnay. The film stars Nick Stahl, Tamsin Topolski, Randy Vasquez, and Penelope Mitchell. It is Nicholas Tomnay's second feature film after The Perfect Host (2010).

What You Wish For had limited theatrical release in United States on 31 May 2024. The film received generally favourable reviews from critics.

Plot

Ryan, a talented but down-on-his-luck chef, flees from his gambling problems to an unnamed Latin American country to meet with his friend Jack, whom he has not seen for several years and who now cooks for a shady entertainment company specialising in illegal dinner events with human flesh for high-end clientele. When Jack hangs himself from work pressure and remorse, Ryan sees his suicide as an opportunity to escape from his own financial difficulties and assumes Jack's identity place to cook an important meal for the clients of the company, after the company's killer "sources" a male local for Ryan to use as "meat produce". By chance the murdered man's uncle turns out to be a police detective, and when the detective comes with inquiries to the company's villa, he ends up sitting down to the dinner made from his nephew's flesh. Faced with disclosure from the company that there is no way for him to leave employment without becoming an "ingredient" in the company's next dinner event, Ryan confesses everything to the detective. The detective is killed at the end of the meal, with his flesh saved for the next event and with a falsified email purporting to explain his nephew's disappearance sent in his name to his sister.

Flying out home to London at the airport the next day, Ryan appears to be resigned to his employment in the company and gives his name as "Jack" to a fellow traveller at the bar.

Cast

• Nick Stahl as Ryan
• Tamsin Topolski as Imogene
• Randy Vasquez as Detective Ruiz
• Penelope Mitchell as Alice
• Brian Groh as Jack
• Juan Carlos Messier as Maurice

Production

Nicholas Tomnay spoke in his 'Director Statement' to Rich Girl Network TV about writing a script for the film and its principal photography in Colombia during autumn of 2021:^{[3][better source needed]}

I wrote the script for "What You Wish For" at the end of 2018. Soon after this another film I was deep into a pre-production which fell through – the third one for me in about five years.

In the summer of 2019, I decided to stop asking permission from other people and produce "What You Wish For'" myself.

With my wife’s help, we began raising money, and a few years later we had a modest budget. I found an excellent production services team in Bogota, enlisted a couple of other producers to help, and in the fall of 2021 during the pandemic production began.

Release

What You Wish For premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival, on July 30, 2023.^[4] The film played in several other festivals, including FrightFest,^[5] Fantastic Fest,^[6] and Scream Fest.^[7] In January 2024, Magnet Releasing acquired the United States distribution rights to the film.^[8]

What You Wish For was released in select cinemas and on digital in United States by Magnet Releasing on 31 May 2024.^[9]

Reception

Box office

What You Wish For grossed $2,587 from 16 cinemas during its opening weekend in the United States.^[1]

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 82% of 33 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.2/10.^[10] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 66 out of 100, based on 6 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.^[11]

Mary Beth McAndrews from Dread Central wrote in her upbeat review: "What You Wish For is a delightfully skeezy thriller about desperation and searching for that one life-changing meal."^[12]

Glenn Kenny gave a positive review to the film and compared its emotional impact to:^[13]

...Hitchcock’s “Psycho” in which Norman Bates is dumping Marion Crane’s car, with her dead body in the trunk, into the swamp behind the Bates Motel. It sinks steadily for a while, then stalls, and we gasp. And we wonder, why are we gasping?

Kyle Smith of The Wall Street Journal was also positive: "The pleasure it brings is comfortingly old-fashioned."^[14] Michael Talbot Haynes at Film Threat gave the film an 8/10 rating: "What You Wish For is everything you could wish for in a well-lit plunge into the abyss."^[15]

Courtney Howard of Variety was less enthusiastic about the film, stating, "The obvious Aesop’s Fables-inspired lessons make what could’ve been an extraordinary meal into something far less memorable."^[16]

Fred Topel of United Press International also gave the film a negative review and wrote, "Plays like the B-movie knockoff of last year's The Menu. While Wish would have been in the works before The Menu premiered, a side-by-side comparison shows what the bigger studio version got so right."^[17]

References

External links

• What You Wish For (2023) on Magnet Releasing, film's official page on its distributor's website
• What You Wish For at IMDb