Ouija Review Part 1
What’s better than a horror movie where lots of scary stuff happens? How about a horror movie where no scary stuff happens?
This is a film that suffered from the Curse of the X-Files. The problem the X-Files suffered from was every time you were 100% convinced you were about to see an alien, ghost, Bigfoot, or chupacabra only to have it turn out to be a cat or some damn thing. X-Files was 85% set up, 14% misinterpretation of data, and 1% actual aliens.
That’s not to say it’s a bad formula. The X-Files was wildly successful and that formula rocked for setting atmosphere and that is what this film also does. If setting up creepy situations is your goal this film could be your YouTube instructional video. The problem is when it actually came time for something to happen the creepy atmosphere stopped off at the Hum Drum Truck Stop and took a little snooze in the back seat of its car.
The story is pretty much the love child of an episode of Supernatural mated with Scooby Doo (image courtesy of the cartoon t shirt category). I have to admit serious disappointment in the level of creativity displayed here. The story was every bad horror/ghost cliche done in a dead boring order. Why not have the Ouija board be a key to a portal to the Lost City of R’Lyeh and the kids have to wander around trying to avoid Cthulu and his minions. Of course at that point the movie would have been a rip off of Hellraiser II but honestly it would have been a lot more fun. How about the Ouija board is connected to the ghost of a girl killed by a serial killer and she is trying to give them clues to who it is before he kills off half the local high school? The police are desperate to find him but no one believes the kids except for one desperate cop out for revenge for his daughters death (in this case played by James Woods). Either of these stories would have been better than the formulaic dross this film is comprised of and I just thought of them while sitting here at my desk.
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Ouija Review Part 2
There is one thing about this film that I love and that is it shows that once in a while Hollywood can learn a lesson. You see this is another Hasbro property and after they massive success they had with the Tranformers series they clearly thought that the nostalgia of their toys and games is what sold that Micheal Bay brain drain and so they sank a ton of money into Battleship, the worst navel film since the Final Countdown. When their nine figure exxxxxxxxxxxxxxtravaganza went on to suck and die they must have had a “What the hell are we doing??” moment and took the budget for their huge horror release Ouija down from a ridiculous $100,000,000 budget to a much more reasonable teenage slasher $15,000,000. Net result: a decent box office return on a reasonable property. Let’s hope they keep this lesson in mind when it comes time to do the Candyland movie. (Image courtesy of the Transfomers t shirt category)
But the warm feeling I get from that lesson does not diminish the issues with this film. Characters in films are appealing when they act smart in the face of difficulty. These kids were freaking idiots. A key plot point was in order to appease the ghost they twice had to sneak into a basement and find the corpse of a girl and either free or burn it. At no point did any of them think to call the police and say something like “Um, we think there’s a human corpse in the basement over here. Could you like send over the coroner and take care of it?” Nope instead let’s load up on flashlights Goonies style and creepy crawl into your impending deaths. Everyone keeps dying solo and so let’s all split up to expedite the killing. Of course beautiful early 20 year olds playing high school students (plus guys who more or less look and act like more like chicks) are at the top of my list of people I like to see die horribly in horror films so by the end of this movie I was seriously rooting for the ghost.
Of course it should go without saying putting a PG-13 stamp on a movie that claims to be horror is laughable in every sense of the word. PG-13 is the worst. In fact you can rearrange the letters in PG-13 and get it to spell suck.
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Ouija Review Part 3
The story. A girl (Shelly Hennig) plays around with a Ouija board by herself and kills herself. Her best friend Laine (Olivia Cooke), Laine’s sister Sarah (Ana Coto), and three other Red Shirts (Daren Kagasoff, Bianca Santos, Doughlas Smith) try to use the board to contact Debbie but instead contact the ghost that killed her. The kids start dropping off one by one like participants in a game of musical chairs and it’s up to Laine to figure out what is going on. At this point just switch over to any vengeful spirit episode of Supernatural and substitute two hot sisters for the two hot brothers and you are good to go. Turns out the last occupant in the house was a medium who had two daughters and killed one of them while talking to spirits and the other daughter killed the mother and the girl is buried in the basement and they need to release the spirit and then they need to burn the body Supernatural style and…
I’m sorry did I fall asleep there? Looks like there is a limit to how many cliches I can recount in a day before falling into a coma. So how about this movie you ask? Meh. The atmosphere stuff works really well and if being startled by a door shutting and showing you a creepy man/boy who wasn’t there a second ago (it was just one of the boyfriends) gets your blood pumping you won’t regret it. However if you are looking for either an original story or a body count movie this will bore the crap out of you. Acting wasn’t bad nor were the special effects given the budget (I can literally see the PA in my mind they had thumping on walls and floors). However the formulaic nature of the film and the gore smothering PG-13 rating will leave you with nothing to grab onto. See it if there is nothing else good on but honestly I’d rather have seen John Wick a second time. 2 of 5 Phasers.
Looks like kind of a lame movie weekend honestly. I have a couple of cultural commentary blog I have been thinking about so maybe I will do those this weekend. I suppose I should go see Box Trolls and am excited about Nightcrawler so I will have something for you this weekend. Thanks for reading.
the Infamous Dave Inman
(BTW the image is actually a t-shirt we have in the horror movie t-shirts category. Even I get surprised by what we have sometimes).
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