A group of teens decide to try and contact their recently-deceased friend via a Ouija Board in the horror film Ouija. Review after the jump.
It was this Halloween’s main horror release and by all accounts it disappoints to no end. Made for a paltry (in Hollywood terms) sum of just $5 million, Ouija has had a brilliant return on its budget – raking in $55 million by the time I got round to writing this review. Directed by Stiles White, Ouija is 90 minutes of cliché and tediousness. So much so, that I had to question my love of all things film once the end credits started to roll.
Laine and Debbie have been friends since they were little and, at the beginning of the movie, we see them playing around with the titular Hasbro board game. We then move on ten or so years and Debbie is still playing it by herself. When she apparently kills herself by hanging, Laine and a group of friends try to contact her via the Ouija board and their lives are put at risk.
Not a bad premise I hear you say. Well, yeah it’s okay, but it is executed abysmally. The root of the film’s problem is the script. It is terrible. The majority of the movie is boring, the scares are so clichéd you can spot them a mile off and the characters have no depth to them whatsoever. Oh and they are all pathetically stupid.
The movie is shot fine and the score is decent, but that’s where the positives start and end. All you are left with is attempted jump scare after attempted jump scare after the thirty minute mark. It takes that long for anything to really happen (barring the crap opening sequence).
For example, the group of friends are playing this board game. One of them dies, and instead of ringing the police or getting the hell out of Dodge, the remaining friends just carry on playing on the damn Ouija.
It’s pathetically stupid and the only way this film could have redeemed itself slightly is if you automatically received a medal, or a certificate or some sort of cash prize if you managed to sit all the way through it.
We know that movie making is a business and the producers are looking to make money on the back of films, but Ouija seems to have been made for that reason only. They make no attempt at all to thrill their potential audience.
As we stated above, Ouija has made some decent money at the box office, not head turning but decent just the same. When you see that this year’s The Houses October Built will probably make next to nothing, you can’t help but feel ashamed.
Ouija needs to be boxed up and stored away in someone’s attic for all of time.
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