Screamfest review: 'What You Wish For' lacks follow through

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 13 (UPI) -- What You Wish For, which screened at Screamfest in Los Angeles, 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.

Ryan (Nick Stahl) is fleeing to South America to visit his culinary school roommate, Jack (Brian Groh). Ryan is fleeing the people to whom he owes money, and they appear to be more ruthless than Visa creditors.

Jack and Ryan show their skills when they cook for another traveler, Alice (Penelope Mitchell). But, when Jack disappears, Ryan sees an opportunity to take his place.

Ryan fakes his way through an interview with Jack's clients (Tamsin Topolski and Juan Carlos Messier), not entirely realizing what he's getting himself into. Jack was hired to prepare a special meal for an elite table of diners, and the more Ryan learns, the more it becomes clear why Jack had second thoughts.

What You Wish For has the makings of a mainstream suspense thriller. Ryan is the protagonist sap who gets in way over his head, but has just enough wits to stay afloat hoping to come out the other side.

The nature of the meal is a bit more macabre than The Menu's. In The Menu, the chef, played by Ralph Fiennes, cooked a meal to antagonize his guests, but Ryan has to please them and not let on that he's not actually Jack.

Without spoiling too much, a few narrative decisions reveal writer-director Nicholas Tomnay's script was not fully thought through. To perpetrate his ruse, Ryan orders a fake U.K. driver's license online.

The website actually lets Ryan upload a passport-style photo and receive a fake ID in the mail. Any potentially compelling twist the film has in store later is undermined by such a preposterous plot point.

There are plenty of underground back alleys that might have provided Ryan a convincing fake ID. None of them would have a user-friendly website, no matter how dark the web is.

Ryan faces further interruptions while he tries to get through the meal that put suspenseful twists on Ryan maintaining his cover. It's just all predicated on too many unbelievable oversights.

With Stahl in the lead and a polished production on location, What You Wish For will likely find distribution. When it is widely available, be warned it does not entirely fulfill its premise.

Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.