Out in theaters this weekend is John R. Leonetti’s Wish Upon, which follows a teenager named Clare (Joey King), who is gifted with a mysterious box that has the ability to grant the owner seven wishes. The only catch is that for each wish granted, a blood sacrifice is required, and Clare is unable to stop a series of horrific and violent deaths that follow. Unwilling to give up the ideal life she finally gets to lead, Clare finds herself spiraling out of control as her obsession with the magical box grows deeper.
In Wish Upon, Ryan Phillippe plays Clare’s father, a working-class single dad who makes ends meet by going through dumpsters to find scraps and other valuables he can either repurpose or sell for cash. During the recent press day for Wish Upon, Phillippe discussed how the struggles his character Jonathan faces were something that hearkened back to his own life, and he also chatted about how much he enjoyed playing different versions of the same guy and how he saw some similarities between Wish Upon and the genre films he was a part of back in the 1990s.
And because this year marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Jim Gillespie’s I Know What You Did Last Summer, we couldn’t help but ask Phillippe about the legacy of that film over the last two decades and what that has meant to him.
Look for Wish Upon in theaters everywhere on Friday, July 14th (with select advanced screenings kicking off on Thursday evening), courtesy of Broad Green Pictures.
Heather A. Wixson was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, until she followed her dreams and moved to Los Angeles in 2009. A 14-year veteran in the world of horror entertainment journalism, Wixson fell in love with genre films at a very early age, and has spent more than a decade as a writer and supporter of preserving the history of horror and science fiction cinema. Throughout her career, Wixson has contributed to several notable websites, including Fangoria, Dread Central, Terror Tube, and FEARnet, and she currently serves as the Managing Editor for Daily Dead, which has been her home since 2013. She's also written for both Fangoria Magazine & ReMind Magazine, and her latest book project, Monsters, Makeup & Effects: Volume One will be released on October 20, 2021.
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