The last time we were here, I boasted that I had never been defeated at the board game Ouija. I am sad to say my hubris has caught up with me and my untarnished record has since fallen by the wayside. In fairness, however, I swear, every.single.time I landed on the crescent moon and drew a Chance card, I got an “ALL PLAY.” WTF? And, really, I don’t think it’s right to have to play Sudden Death OT against the dead; they have quite an unfair advantage.
So here I sit, licking my wounds, so-to-speak, and I’m forced to describe the newest coffee-table-to-big-screen iteration, Ouija: Origin of Evil. Have you ever thought about the meeting that led to Hasbro’s mass marketing the game? “Fellas, what we really need is to make the occult main stream. I want to sell black magic to the masses. They’ll eat it up.”
Speaking of black magic, it is the time of men first soaring to the moon. The father-challenged Zander family makes money, and not much money at that, cheating people with staged mystic readings. The mom, Alice Zander (Elizabeth Reaser), sits at the table with the mark, while teen daughter Lina (Annalise Basso) and nine-year-old Doris (Lulu Wilson) move stuff around and signal unseen from the shadows so that mom can dramatically summon the Queen of Cups and say, “is this your card?”
One day, Alice decides to pep up the act with a Ouija board, unaware that this is just the big break evil forces have been awaiting to emerge and have some fun. I swear I don’t get evil forces sometimes. You’ve been dormant or at least suppressed for a decade or two and all you want to do is scare people? Wouldn’t you find, you know, television kinda cool? Or isn’t it awesome knowing there’s major league baseball on both coasts now? Wouldn’t you at least consider Vegas? Evil does like to have fun, doesn’t it?
In an effort to have dad read one last bedtime story, Doris starts messin’ with the board on her own and pretty soon she’s speaking in tongues and writing slavic Dear Diary messages. “Strange, my daughter doesn’t normally write gothic essays in Polish.” I was more than a little surprised that her sister Lina recognized the language; sure, there are a few languages I don’t speak that I’d be able to identify, but Polish ain’t one of ’em. At first I thought it alarming that mom and sis not recognize the danger here, but let’s face it – if you want to communicate with a lost family member and supernatural forces invite themselves to dinner at your call, you might just give them the benefit of the doubt. I mean, who else would want to play house with you?
And, sure, being a friend of the dead has its benefits. All you have to do is take out one bully and playground respect is yours forever. Homework
also seems to be less of an issue when you’re housing more than one entity in your frame.
Ouija: Origin of Evil has a few good scares and does an awesome job at channeling evil through the vessel of Doris — so much so, in fact, I’m very interested to see Lulu Wilson’s next few projects, especially if they aren’t horror related. What Ouija didn’t do well is figure out what it wanted to do after the possession. I left the theater certain I had seen plenty of horror but uncertain as to why – the dead are badly in need of an agenda. The film was practically replete with communication devices – for the love of amphibians, there’s even one in the title – look, dead folks, would it kill you to list, I dunno, a bullet point or two? Just move that little arrow to the “YES?” Perhaps that’s the true evil here.
♪What crawls downstairs
And knocks over chairs
Allied with things underground?
Such things! She brings! All sorts of beings!
Everyone knows it’s your sister.
Tongue twister or blister
She makes such incredible noise
Was just here, you missed her
She’s murdering girls and boys♫
Rated PG-13, 99 Minutes
D: Mike Flanagan
W: Mike Flanagan, Jeff Howard
Genre: Board games with Satan
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Polish demons
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Struggling parents
♪ Parody inspired by “The Slinky Song”
