Genie, Make a Wish

The Genie’s Dilemma: When Magic Can’t Fix a Broken Story

I’ll admit it—I laughed out loud in the first ten minutes of Genie, Make a Wish. Kim Woo-bin, playing a genie named Iblis (yes, that Iblis), materializes in a puff of CGI smoke, squints at the modern world like a confused time traveler, and deadpans, “Humans still use these tiny rectangles to talk?” The line lands because Woo-bin sells it with the perfect mix of arrogance and bewilderment, his sharp cheekbones casting shadows that make him look like he’s judging us all. For a moment, I thought this might be the rare fantasy rom-com that actually works—one where the magic feels as lived-in as the messiness of the humans it’s meant to serve.

But then the wishes start piling up, and so do the problems. Genie, Make a Wish wants to be a lot of things at once: a screwball comedy, a tragic romance, a meditation on emotional numbness, a visual love letter to Dubai’s skyline, and—somehow—a story about a genie who may or may not be the Islamic equivalent of the devil. It’s a lot. Too much, really.

The show’s biggest wish, it turns out, is for coherence.

The premise is simple enough: Suzy plays Yeo Jin, a woman born without the ability to feel emotions, who accidentally frees Iblis from a 1,000-year imprisonment. In exchange for her freedom, he offers her three wishes. The catch?

Every wish comes with a curse, and Iblis, being a genie with a flair for the dramatic, isn’t exactly forthcoming about the fine print. What follows is a series of increasingly convoluted attempts by Yeo Jin to “fix” her emotional void, only to discover that the real problem isn’t her lack of feelings—it’s that she’s never been allowed to want anything for herself.

That’s a compelling idea, and Suzy sells it with a physicality that’s often overlooked in K-drama heroines. She moves through the world like someone who’s spent her life observing emotions rather than feeling them—her posture is stiff, her smiles are practiced, and her eyes are always calculating, even when she’s supposed to be in love. There’s a scene in Episode 4 where she tries to cry on command, her face contorting into something that’s supposed to resemble grief but looks more like a child mimicking a sad face in a mirror.

It’s uncomfortable, and it’s supposed to be. Suzy’s performance is the show’s most consistent strength, a quiet rebellion against the genre’s tendency to equate emotional depth with tearful monologues.