Djinn is a 2012 Emirati horror movie directed by Tobe Hooper.
A young Emirati couple decide to return home for a while after the untimely death of their firstborn, but after settling into a spacious new apartment building, are soon menaced by malevolent djinni.
This film provides examples of:
- Changeling Tale: It turns out Salama killed her own son because she subconsciously realized that the child was actually part djinn. Khalid was also substituted for a human baby.
- Downer Ending: Salama's family has been killed, her husband Khalid is revealed as a djinn after she realizes the entire thing was a trap, and he throws her off the roof of the apartment building. The end.
- Glamour: Salama and Khalid settle into a remote apartment building that seems to be staffed by only one person and houses only one other family despite the spacious rooms available. Near the end she realizes that the whole thing is an illusion created by the djinn and the place is really abandoned.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Khalid turns out to be the child of a female djinn and human man.
- Interspecies Romance: The female djinn loved a human, bearing him a child.
- Our Genies Are Different: The djinni are pretty much The Fair Folk, including the use of glamour and replacing babies with non-human ones. They're intelligent beings who live in haunted places and kill any human intruders, though one man manages to make a bargain by offering the life of his friend. They don't offer any wishes though. Also, it turns out that the male lead is a djinn, which he didn't know about.
- Offing the Offspring: It turns out Salama killed her son after realizing he was part djinn.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Salama and Khalid's marriage has been fraught with tension since the post-natal death of their infant son.
- Surprise Car Crash: Salama's family is driving on a desert road when their car is attacked by an evil djinn. When the noise stops, the father goes outside to investigate, looks under the car... and then another car hits theirs at full speed.
- Tomato in the Mirror: At the end, Khalid realizes that he's actually a djinn himself. He then throws his wife off a building in retribution for her previously having killed their child because she was starting to realize that he was an Enfant Terrible.
