Movie Review: OUIJA

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When there is no more room for remakes, board game adaptations will fill the theaters.

Ouija is the directorial debut of Stiles White, who is the co-writer, along with Juliet Snowden, of such gems as The Possession (2012) and 2005’s Knowing. Universal decided to give White the chance to direct based off the fact that the White & Snowden duo have been touted around Hollywood as a “hot” genre screenwriting duo. Yet, none of their efforts have seemed to really have a lasting effect. Also, last time I checked, I think The Possession, did moderately well the first week and dropped significantly. Given the fact that a film like Ouija is obviously a brand push into a different medium, the creative force behind the film could have used that blank slate to really do something interesting.

Olivia Cooke (Bates Motel) stars as Laine who, along with her close high school friends, grieve over what they think is a close friend’s unexpected suicide. Of course, the blonde who bites the bullet in the beginning didn’t off herself naturally. She was possessed. The teens keep messing with the board that their dearly departed friend, Deb, left behind in order to contact her and say goodbye. Of course, as they find out after the second unnecessary (well, it’s necessary if we want a movie) time they use it, they find out they didn’t contact Deb.

It’s fairly obvious that the film is trying to capture the same feel of Insidious without putting much effort into it. If they look through the planchette’s circular window, it will give them a window to the netherworld. Oooooooooh……

The decent things about Ouija are that Olivia Cooke is the foundation of the film. While the screenplay has her do stupid things over and over and over again – guys, we need to play with that board again, I don’t think we are milking it for all Hasbro wants us to – her acting grounds the film in some sort of reality. Granted, Ouija is a PG-13 film but for the first two-thirds of the film, however inane the script is, you can tell that White isn’t that bad of a director (probably a better director than a screenwriter) and the crew is trying to make a slow burn horror film using creative, gothic lighting. The problem is, the film is a byproduct of a brand geared towards teenagers that need constant scares and Ouija doesn’t deliver. Worse off, even for seasoned horror fans, while the characters’ actions are hilarious, they feel real and believable. Of course, once you get to the “twist” in the film (around the last 30 minutes), we shift into a different gear where someone above the filmmakers must have said “Guys, we need to actually try and scare the audience now.”

Ouija is a throwaway screenplay yet there is some technical achievement here that might make it worth a look when it hits home – the ghost shadow and the outline in the mirror were highlights that harkened back to old-school ghost stories.