Ouija

WARNING: This review is hidden because it reveals the content of the film.
Click here to show this review. I thought they stopped making horror movies as bad as “Ouija” a long time ago, the kind of pictures that are held together by stupid characters making stupid decisions while audience members are asked to swallow cliché after cliché. Not only did this film get released, in theatres, in 2014… it made over a $100 million at the box office. What kind of world am I living in?

Based on the board game by Hasbro, Laine (Olivia Cooke) is horrified when she finds out that her best friend Debbie (Shelley Hennig) has committed suicide after playing with a Ouija Board alone. Suspecting that the game has something to do with her death, she gets her friends Trevor (Daren Kagasoff), Isabell (Bianca Santos), Pete (Douglas Smith) and her younger sister (Sarah Ana Coto) to help her get to the bottom of this Scooby-Doo mystery.

From the get-go, “Ouija” makes a mistake by having these soon-to-be-dead teenagers play with an actual Ouija board instead of some creepy-looking thing they find in a cemetery, or an attic like the kids in “Jumanji” did. Forget your friend, she’s dead! Make the most of the situation and sue Hasbro for everything they’ve got for releasing a killer board game that can summon ghosts! I know all movies require a certain amount of suspension of disbelief, but they don’t even try here.

The rest of the film plays out in a manner that’s so dull it’s a chore to recollect. From the get-go, you can see every single death coming. That’s not inherently bad. You see the deaths coming in all of the “Final Destination” movies, but at least there, the payoff is good and there’s tension. “Ouija” is as tense as a wet noodle between two dogs falling in love. These characters are so flat you don’t care about them and making it worse, they make every single mistake possible. We’re given the “Rules” of the Ouija Board. How you’re never supposed to play alone, you must always say goodbye before leaving the board and you should never play in a cemetery. Those are not difficult rules to follow, and yet the fail to abide by them over and over. It’s not that dark forces are after them, it’s that they are all simply too stupid to live. Making it worse is the fact that this film is rated PG-13. It isn’t good and can’t be sleazy either. It’s such a big disappointment too, these young adults are so foolish and the actors playing them are so bad you keep fantasizing about each and everyone one of them suffering a gloriously macabre death… and “Ouija” dares to have some of them die off-screen? Give me the camera, I’ll show you how it’s done!

I am so sick of seeing what “Ouija” is placing on the board. This is a film for teenage audiences so starved for scares they confuse being startled for being frightened. I know you and your honey want to go somewhere dark to snuggle, but if that’s all you need, save yourself from this travesty. Go sit in a park at night, load up some of the Youtube videos, the ones where you look at a car or people dancing innocently and a spooky face jumps in and screams. That’ll cost you nothing AND you save some time. Honestly, the creepiest bits of imagery present here are nothing special. Even if they were, you’ll become so infuriated at the sight of brain-dead teenagers standing alone, in a dark room just so they can make each other jump out of their skins for nothing you’ll pop a blood vessel.

Without any scares, surprises, interesting characters, new additions to the genre or compelling plot points, “Ouija” is an easy skip. There’s been a prequel announced and I have to believe that it’ll be better than this film. There’s little they could do to make it worse. (On DVD, July 24, 2016)