Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
Korean fantasy series ‘Genie, Make A Wish’ pits a satanic genie against a psychopathic master (the show’s words, not mine). Bae Suzy stars as Ka-Young, a stunning, poker-faced mechanic who lives with her grandmother and runs a thriving auto repair shop. But during a trip to Dubai, she ends up with a genie named Iblis (Kim Woo-Bin), becoming an unwilling master who takes her sweet time making her three wishes.
What’s the twist? Ka-Young turns out to be the reincarnation of the young girl whose third wish once condemned Iblis to a thousand years of slumber. Now awake, he’s determined to take revenge, but an unexpected spark of romance with his eccentric master soon complicates everything.
The plot sounds fun, the first episode sets an entertaining tone for the show, and lead actors Bae Suzy and Kim Woo-Bin look stunning together. But the overlong 13 one-hour episodes, packed with half a dozen side characters, soon turn ‘Genie, Make A Wish’ into a tedious snooze-fest.
One of the biggest problem with this K-drama is its inability to pick a lane, it swings between light romantic-comedy and dark fantasy drama without much grace. The laughs are thin, and the plot is over-ambitious in scale, pitting ‘angels’ and ‘demons’ against each other, with a major sub-plot focusing on Iblis’ rivalry with his brother Ejllael, portrayed by the dashing Steve Sanghyun Noh (‘Pachinko’, ‘Love in the Big City’), who isn’t a genie like Iblis, but is the angel of death.
At the heart of the plot lies a clever wager. Iblis wants to prove that humans are hopelessly selfish, but Ka-Young challenges him: he must grant three wishes to the first four people he encounters. If all four act out of greed, Iblis wins and Ka-Young must quickly use her remaining two wishes to set him free. So the show also follows four secondary characters and how they use their wishes, with most of them proving to be un-interesting.
Actor Kim Mi-kyung, last seen as a shaman in ‘Head Over Heels’, plays Ka-Young’s strict grandmother, O Pan-geum, and is the only secondary character whose subplot is genuinely funny and entertaining. Abandoned by her parents for being a pint-sized psychopath with a violent streak, Ka-Young grows up under Grandma Pan-geum’s iron rulebook. It’s the patient granny who ensures Ka-Young ends up becoming a rule-following citizen than future serial killer.
Bae Suzy plays the emotionless Ka-Young with robotic precision, fitting for the character, but the writing often undermines her intelligence. She’s supposed to be smart, just detached, yet in the very first episode she shoves Iblis off a building mere seconds after he’s flown her across town. It’s a bizarrely dumb move for someone meant to be logical. Most of the humor comes from goofy bits, like Ka-Young angrily smacking Iblis around, moments that are meant to be comedic, which aren’t as funny.
Had this series been half its length, it might have been far more entertaining. But at its current runtime, it took me over a week to get through. By the time I finished episode 12, I wasn’t even curious about the climax anymore. Honestly, the only reason I watched episode 13 was to give the show a fair review, otherwise, I’d have quit halfway through, just like my mom did.
Rating: 5 on 10 stars. Watch ‘Genie, Make a Wish’ on Netflix.
Also Read: ‘The Summer Hikaru Died’ Review: Grief, Gore, Ghosts Drive One of 2025’s Best Anime (Short Audio Version Below)