One time when I was a kid in elementary school, some of the girls brought a Ouija board to class and spent a couple of recesses playing around with it. Naturally, some of the boys (myself included) thought this was a stupid thing to be doing, and teased the girls for doing this. The girls subsequently made “contact” with a guy named James Dean. No, I don’t know if it was that James Dean. Regardless, the girls said that he said that I was “going to get it” for teasing them. Of course I thought it was bullcrap, until all these years later, I receive a copy of Stiles White’s Ouija in the mail. Turns out in the end that I did “get it”.
Two childhood friends grew up playing with the Ouija board together. One night, one of the best friends, Debbie (Shelley Hennig) decides that after a bad seance to take her Ouija board and attempt to burn it. She becomes possessed by the board and hangs herself. After the funeral, Debbie’s best friend Laine (Olivia Cooke) and the rest of her friends decide that something’s not right, and decide to investigate. They decide to use Debbie’s Ouija board to try and find out what happened. In doing so, the group discovers that some things are best left alone.
Given that the last time we had a horror film that centred on a Ouija board was way back in 1993 with Kevin Tenney’s Witchboard 2, it’s nice that Hollywood remembered all the potential creepy stuff you can do with it. Hell, even The Exorcist managed to incorporate a Ouija board as a plot point. Granted, the idea of kids dabbling in the Occult is more of a relic of the 80s and early 90s, but the potential for creepy stuff to happen because of people not knowing what they were doing is practically a slam dunk in most cases.
Due to director Stiles White’s past experience as production coordinator at Stan Winston Studio, the man knows his way around the camera. The best thing about Ouija is the atmosphere created by White. Shadows play a big part in emphasizing an evil presence surrounding the board, and help to build up the tension and potential scares. It’s certainly better than the point-and-shoot approach that some first-time directors use.
Alright, you know how this goes. In case you didn’t know from me stretching to find positives about this film, Ouija blows hard. All that potential spookiness? All those set-up shots that are meant to evoke tension? That amounts to the same predictable jump scares that are neither frightening nor entertaining and a clunky story. So much so that the film drags for it’s 89-minute runtime, making the whole thing a chore to watch and a by-the-numbers bore to sit through. It didn’t help that the deaths amounted to that cheap cut-away crap each time (gotta keep it PG-13 for the money, folks!). Toss in for good measure some bland, unlikeable characters with whom you can’t sympathize because they’re the cliche, insipid teenager types (who typically in this day and age, aren’t even played by teens). It’s pretty insulting how a film that’s been given a goldmine to exploit and explore with something like a Ouija board spits out a boring clunker that wouldn’t even pass as a good made-for-TV movie.
How a film this bad rakes in $97 million is beyond me. This really must have been for the same crowd who liked the Twilight series. Serious horror fans have enough brains and taste to stay away from a flat, 89-minute snoozefest of cheap “boo!” scares with characters that you want to dropkick down the stairs. Did I mention that there’s a sequel on the way? Here’s a tip: Go and buy Witchboard from Scream Factory. Not only will you get a far better film than Ouija, you’ll be supporting Scream Factory, a company that obviously cares about the genre and it’s fans, instead of insulting it’s audience with crap like this.
Video/Audio:
Despite the film being garbage, at least the presentation is nice. Universal brings Ouija home with a 1080p AVC-encoded 2.40:1 widescreen transfer, and the results are excellent. Colours are strong with nice contrast and deep black levels. The image sports crisp details with some great textures. No real issues to speak of here.
On the audio front, the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is also great. Dialogue is clear and easily discernable. The track sports some nice ambient effects, although they take a back seat to the film’s tendency to rely on jump scares and sudden outbursts. Still, the directionals do a great job of showcasing movement in the soundtrack, and the lower end benefits from the film’s jolts.
Extras:
To go along with a crappy movie, we get some crappy featurettes. First up is “The Spirit Board: An Evolution”. It’s basically a group of folks consisting of Ouija producer Bennett Schneir, director/co-writer Stiles White, co-writer Juliet Snowden, Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine Lee Kagan and talking boards collector/historian Robert Murch. No, I didn’t make that last one up. The group talks about the history of the Ouija board intersperced with clips from the film.
“Adapting the Fear” is another EPK, this time with the cast and filmmakers talking about the difficulties of taking a board game and making it into a film.
Want more fluff? “Icon of the Unknown” is yet another talking heads featurette that explains how the board works. Better yet, go look up Penn & Teller’s explanation. I don’t even like Penn & Teller, but they do a better job of explaining it than this waste of disc space.
Also included is a slipcover replicating the cover art for the case, and DVD and digital copies of the film.