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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