Ouija: Origin of Evil

I could not be more surprised at my reaction to “Ouija: Origin of Evil”, the prequel to the lackluster “Ouija”. How often is it that we get a prequel that is not only good, but that blows its “predecessor” out of the water? “Ouija: Origin of Evil” has taken notes of how to make a successful horror film. It has likable characters, ample creepy moments, genuine scares, and uses the premise that was handed to it elegantly.

Set in 1967, widow Alice Zander (Elizabeth Reaser) works at home, making money by talking to spirits and acting as a medium to answer her clients’ pressing questions from the afterlife. In truth, she, and her two daughters, teenage Lina (Annalise Basso) and nine-year-old Doris (Lulu Wilson) are charlatans. When Alice decides to spice up her act by bringing a Ouija board into the house, it taps into a genuine spiritual presence.

What works first and foremost about “Origin of Evil” is the atmosphere and the characters. From the get-go, the film brings you back into the 60’s. It’s got the old Universal logo, a title card reminiscent of horror films of that time, even the way the scares are handled are reminiscent of that era where pictures didn’t rely on gore. Instead, they relied on giving you a quaint picture of a family, happy people suddenly plunged into a nightmare. I know from the premise you think that you’re not going to like the protagonists. “They’re frauds!” you say, but that’s not really the case. The more you find out about this family, the more you’ll understand their plight. They’re desperate and hurting after a loss of their own. They want to give closure to other people who are still mourning the dead. They wish someone else had done this to them, told them that the father has moved on and that everything is going to be all right. When creepy things begin, you understand why they stay in the house. In fact, they’re given very compelling reasons to do so.

I know why this picture was green-lit. Despite being quite bad, 2014’s “Ouija” was very successful. When I think of this film, I picture a great chef given a box of Kraft Dinner macaroni. Yes, there are weaknesses in “Origin of Evil”. I think some of the creepy visuals are a bit played out and at points, the story is a little wacky. Those do not come from the team that put this picture together. They are all elements from the first picture. “Origin of Evil” is doomed to end in a way that will lead into the “sequel”. It’s high praise to it that despite this, it manages to be genuinely frightening. At its core, I think that’s what this film is about. It’s not turning a board game into a profitable franchise. It’s about real human emotion. People want to know what happens after we die. They don’t want to let go of the people that pass away. They feel a need to try and communicate with the people they should have let go of. Without giving too much away, I think the film is very intelligent in the way it handles the idea of “speaking to the dead”.

Here we’ve got an example of how to handle a spooky story on the big screen. Firstly, it doesn’t feature a lot of characters. Just a few people populate the story and you get to know them well. I genuinely cared about Lina, Alice, Doris, and Father Tom (Henry Thomas, who comes in later in the film to help out with the supernatural business gone wrong) I even liked Parker Mack in a small role. There are many moments where the camera sits, waiting for you to start panicking and look into the shadows, focussing intensely, hoping to see what’s hiding out there until Aiiieee! You get a nice, well-earned scare. I even thought the performances were pretty good, impressive considering a lot of the picture focuses on a young actress.

After seeing “Ouija”, I was dumbfounded. How did someone make a film THAT BAD and release it in the theater? I don’t know, maybe they wanted to kill someone’s career or something. If you were let down by it like me, do not let that dissuade you from seeing “Ouija: Origin of Evil”. I wish they could’ve rebooted the franchise and dropped some of the stitched mouth visual stuff from the first film, but that HAD to be here, it’s one of the few memorable things about the original picture. “Origin of Evil” is a good horror film and when you see it, stick all the way to the end of the credits. Not only are they imaginative, but they also feature a little scene at the very end. (Theatrical version on the big screen, October 30, 2016)