A girl plays with an old Ouija Board, and is later found dead in her own home, supposedly having killed herself. One of her closest friends is not convinced that she committed suicide, and suspects that something else must have caused her death. Desperate to find answers, she finds the old Ouija Board and convinces her other friends to play with it inside the dead girl’s home. When they get in contact with what appears to be their deceased friend, they soon discover that something is not right…and that certain things should never be played with.
A spirit board is often simply referred to as a Ouija Board, with the word Ouija actually being a trademark of Hasbro, Inc. Despite being considered a very “dangerous” thing to play with, often being represented as a supernatural version of a “Russian Roulette” in horror lore, this thing has been sold as a regular toy for years. It has even had a “girly” version of it with pink casing sold at Toys ‘R Us. And to my knowledge, none of the toy manufacturers have ever had any lawsuits won against them due to children getting possessed, or mayhem breaking out in people’s home due to spirits invading their privacy. So, make of that what you will.
Now, this movie does have a decent idea for a horror story, considering that the Ouija Board has often just been used as a prop in horror movies, without having much relevance otherwise. Unfortunately, it does become very formulaic very quickly, and it becomes one of those horror movies you’ve already seen multiple times before. The performances are okay though, and it was a nice treat to see Lin Shaye (from the Insidious movies) play a little role here.
Ouija is the type of horror movie that runs a very basic formula: strange death, friends seeking answers, friends getting killed off one by one after messing with things they shouldn’t have messed with. However, as a teenage horror-popcorn flick it does alright, I guess.
Director: Stiles White
Country & year: USA, 2014
Actors: Olivia Cooke, Ana Coto, Daren Kagasoff, Bianca A. Santos, Douglas Smith, Shelley Hennig, Sierra Heuermann, Sunny May Allison, Lin Shaye, Claudia Katz Minnick, Vivis Colombetti, Robyn Lively, Matthew Settle, Afra Sophia Tully
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt1204977/
Related post: Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016)
It’s a dark and stormy night when comic book artist Colin Childress (Jeffrey Combs) works on his horror series Cellar Dweller. He sets his final drops of ink on a sequence where a young, half-naked damsel in distress runs through the woods and ends up trapped by a satanic, hairy monster. After Colin randomly quotes some obscure phrases from a book of witchcraft, he unconsciously manages to summon both the monster and the damsel who emerges right behind his back. While Herbert West..uhm, sorry, I mean Colin, runs frightened out of his studio, the monster kills the damsel off-screen. Since the monster was summoned from the drawing paper, Colin gets the brilliant idea to set the artwork on fire, which escalates into an inferno that kills them both. The rest of his artwork manage to survive, though.
Philip (Sean Harris) is a middle-aged man returning to his hometown in Norfolk with a population of probably ten people, which looks like a depressing place to live in. With him he’s got a brown bag containing a puppet called Possum. A terrifying thing with a human head made of rubber, and with spider feet. Philip turns out to be a totally fragile, traumatized man, trapped in a severe life crisis, who constantly seems be on the verge of blowing out in full panic attack at any moment. And the nightmare fuel provided by Possum clearly doesn’t makes it any better. Time to watch some cat videos on YouTube, I would say. Anyway, he goes to his decayed, filthy childhood home where he meets his stepfather Maurice (Alun Armstrong), a greasy old man who probably hasn’t taken a shower in years, and likes to preach stuff that doesn’t make much sense. They turn out to have as much of a resentful relationship with each other as Philip has with Possum, which he repeatedly tries to get rid of by dumping it in the river, burying, burning, and beat the shit out of it to a point where you almost feel more sorry for the puppet than for Philip. But just like a cursed Ouija board, Possum always reappears.
On a remote New England Island in the 1890s, two lighthouse keepers have to stay there for four weeks. Thomas Wake, the oldest between the two, has been watching over the lighthouse for a long time and is used to the unfavorable conditions. His new assistant, Ephraim Winslow, does not settle in with ease however. Ephraim is getting more and more frustrated by the older man’s fussing and complaints, where he is being bossed around constantly. When the four weeks are over, and the boat still doesn’t come to pick up Ephraim due to very bad weather, they both realize they might be stuck on the island for far longer than anticipated. Plagued by bad dreams and hallucinations (or are they hallucinations?) Ephraim tries to keep his sanity on the forsaken rock – but this proves to be difficult as deeply sunken secrets are about to break the surface.
