The film tells you to forget Barbara Eden and forget Robin Williams, genies aren't the benevolent wish granting creatures modern folklore has made them out to be. The Djinn are actually a race of creatures trapped between the worlds of heaven and earth, their only way to get loose into the Earth is for one of them to collect the souls of enough humans and grant three wishes to its original master. This is the plot of the new Wes Craven film the Wishmaster.
LIke all of Craven's films, Wishmaster seems to question whether its script is to be played out in humour or horror. The result is a film that confuses and leaves the viewer unsatisfied, which is too bad because there are elements apparent in the script that would have made the film truly frigtening if they had been played out properly. Instead of screams, Whishmaster falls into silliness and self parody... with cheesy death scenes most notably among them.
The interesting thing that Wishmaster should have played up on is how the Djinn steal the souls, twisting the wish that's given to them into something harmful. One of the best examples of the Djinn's sadistic nature is granting the wish of a million dollars, then showing the man's mother signing an airplane insurance policy... then cut to the plane abruptly crashing. It's too bad the film sucked because better use of the Djinn and its actor, Andrew Divoff, would have made an interesting continual antagonist in the vein of Freddy Kreuger and Pinhead.