From Hasbro.
The H-Bomb: Bubble-headed teen, Debbie (Shelley Hennig), commits suicide after futzing around with an old Ouija Board she found in her attic. Everyone in the community is baffled by this, none more so than Debbie’s best friend, Laine (Olivia Cooke), because Debbie seemed so happy and chirpy and whatnot. After finding the Ouija Board amongst Debbie’s things, Laine decides to use it in order to make contact with her and find out why she took her own life.
Laine chooses to hold this seance inside Debbie’s house, enlisting the help of her other friend, Isabelle (Bianca A. Santos), her boyfriend, Trevor (Daren Kagasoff), her bratty little sister, Sarah (Ana Coto), and Debbie’s boyfriend, Pete (Douglas Smith). They do seem to make contact with someone, or something. When they ask the spirit it’s name, the Ouija pointer moves to the letter “D,” and they oh-so-wisely assume that it’s Debbie they’re talking to.
Except it’s not. It’s someone, or something, else. Someone or something that is none-too-friendly. Before long, other members of Laine’s circle of friends start to die in mysterious ways, and now it’s up to her to find out who this spirit is and what it wants, before she too falls victim to this supernatural threat.
Okay, so films like Session 9, Absentia, and Trick r’ Treat get shat out straight-to-DVD, while something like Ouija gets a wide theatrical release, and opens at number one, to boot? Oh, how I do not understand the world we live in. I seriously don’t get it. This Halloween movie season got off to an utterly mediocre start with Annabelle, and it’s only gone downhill from there. First with Dracula Untold, and now with Ouija, a fucking board game movie that might be scary… if you’re a thirteen-year-old girl who has never seen a horror movie before.
I’m going to level with you people, I’m at a bit of a loss as to what there is to even say about Ouija. The whole film really just is a 90-minute long, empty, vapid void of nothing. It’s a toothless, Diet Coke horror flick that borrows about a hundred different plot points and story lines from a about a hundred different movies that are far better than this one, and inserts them into a cut-and-paste plot with a twist towards the end that is a total and complete rip off of The Ring. If that sounds good to you, then congratulations, you have no taste.
All the cliches are on hand; things going bump in the night, CGI apparitions appearing suddenly for the sake of jump scares, the lights inexplicably going out, so on and so fucking forth. All that shit is here, except unlike James Wan (to use him again), who can take tried and true cliches and use them to a masterfully creepy effect, the hack-ass helmer of this dreck, Stiles White, doesn’t have the slightest clue how to build any kind of tension or suspense, or to create an atmosphere that’s even remotely creepy. One or two Boo! scares aside (hey, when something loud happens unexpectedly, I’m gonna jump… or in this case, be jolted awake), things played out with no effect whatsoever.
Of course, the effectiveness of the horror often depends on how invested we are in the characters, and this is where Ouija really fails epically. Now, the horror genre is not typically known for having deep, complex characters, but the folks who populate this shitdig are especially shallow, lifeless, and stupid. They are so nondescript that they don’t even fit into the standard stock categories of nerd, jock, good girl, slut girl, etc. These soulless little teenybopper nitwits have no defining characteristics whatsoever, no personalities, even, and when they keep on fucking around with the Ouija Board, even though it’s obvious that’s what’s causing all the supernatural shenanigans in the first place, I really wanted to walk out of the theater.
Poor little Olivia Cooke, who’s shown she can act in Bate’s Motel, is given a role so thin that she truly can do nothing with it, no matter how often she cries or looks scared. The other actors are playing such cardboard cutouts, such non-people, that they’re not even worth discussing. There is one member of the supporting cast I will touch on, Lin Shaye, who shows up late in the film to, you guessed it, provide exposition. She reminded me of her character from Insidious… and she reminded me that Insidious is a far superior film that I could and should be watching, instead.
And that’s all I really feel like saying about Ouija. It’s a derivative, predictable waste of celluloid that any horror fan with half a brain will be ten steps ahead of the entire way. Ouija Boards are fascinating, creepy things that are just begging to have a solid, spooky flick centered around them. This diet horror film isn’t it. This, again, is an un-scary, uninspired grab bag of ghost movie tropes that is, of all the lackluster fright flicks to come out this month, far and away the worst of the lot.
