"Will we do well on opening weekend? . . . NO"
When Hasbro announced a deal to turn its games into films, much joking ensued. After the flop Battleship and now Ouija, it’s beginning to seem entirely justified.
There might be a reasonably creepy ghost thriller to be made out of the popular spirit board. This just isn’t it. It looks pretty, to be sure, with the requisite eerie lighting and some decent effects, and it’s reasonably well acted by a cast led by Bates Motel’s Olivia Cooke. Insidious vet Lynn Shaye turns in a juicy performance as a mental patient who may be connected to the death of Cooke’s pal. But it’s so derivative that it’s fun only in a hey look what’s on Netflix kind of way. The lesbian couple beside me who told me they’d gotten drunk before the
The plot, what there is of it, concerns Cooke’s efforts to solve the mystery of her friend’s death, aided by friends including the victim’s boyfriend (Big Love cutie Douglas Smith, doing his best with little to do) and her rebellious sister (Ana Coto, who shows a glimmer of attitude and humor that the movie’s sorely lacking). Much Ouija boarding, flashlight probing, and clichéd jump scaring ensue.
It’s not just that the movie’s so unoriginal. Formulas exist because they work; the shallow but undeniably creepy Annabelle is a perfect example. But while audiences can suspend their disbelief for one or two “Who Would Ever Do That?” moments, Ouija piles them on past the point of common sense. Who would ever go alone into a dark basement, see a ghost, and then stop to retrieve their dropped flashlight before getting out? Who would ever go back to their dead friend’s empty house to have a second Ouija board chat after the first took a horrifying turn and after receiving threatening messages from the beyond? I could go on, but you get the point.
The characters are flat, and the writing about as rote and lazy as it gets. Don’t you love when a simple Google search immediately yields a full page reproduction of an old newspaper headline with all the pertinent details? Or when you’re allowed to see a mental patient by claiming to be their niece, then left unsupervised with them despite their being a convicted murderer? The Scooby Gang had a harder time of it then these kids.
I did enjoy Ouija’s contrast between modern technology—cell phones play a key role in the movie—and something as old fashioned as a spirit board. (But given how unoriginal the rest of the movie is, I’m guessing this wasn’t a deliberate contrast, just an attempt to seem cool and relevant to cinema-going teenagers.) And it’s always fun to see an old fashioned ghost flick with all the trappings, like the climax in the candle lit basement.
But Ouija fails the most important test of all: the movie just isn’t very scary. I never even jumped, and I certainly didn’t feel any of the delicious, lingering dread that a truly scary movie can give you. You’d be better off telling ghost stories with a flashlight than wasting your hard earned pesos on this drivel.
Watch Monster Nation on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWjIUFM35AA
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