Who ever said breaking the rules is always necessary? In the wildly standard, just below average Ouija, some big name YA talents get to flex some darker acting muscles in this sometimes-frightening but altogether derivative horror tale. Meet Laine (Bates Motel’s Olivia Cooke), who recently lost her best friend Debbie (Teen Wolf and The Secret Circle’s Shelley Hennig) under mysterious circumstances. To Ouija’s credit, the film wastes little time getting to the point, never troubling itself too much to explain the strange prevalence of the ‘board game’ known as Ouija (side note: Game company Hasbro takes full credit for providing the inspiration for this movie, even though instances of spirit boards date as far back as 1100 AD China).
There is a certain comfort in the insane predictability of this movie, with its inclusion of doors drifting open, a classic ‘scary noises’ soundtrack, the 372nd creepy doll used in a horror movie, and a veeeeery typical backstory. Daren Kagasoff (Stalker, The Secret Life of the American Teenager) does a fair job of providing the well-meaning boyfriend sidekick, but, like most of the script, **SPOILER ALERT** gets what’s coming to him in the most predictable death scene ever. On the other hand, Ouija shows a good amount of restraint, revealing successful ghost special effects sparingly.
Olivia does a good job carrying the movie, even though she has to utter some of the worst dialog clunkers (“I miss them,” Laine says after losing virtually every single one of her friends). As Laine’s sister Sarah, newcomer Ana Coto sets herself far apart from the pack though, providing her character with a sense of reality the rest of cast sorely lacks.
There is something vaguely refreshing about the fact that Ouija, shot entirely in Los Angeles, primarily uses violins and some percussion in its score. This contributes to the general old-fashioned feeling of the film, made by Universal, a studio with a considerable history in the classic horror film genre. In the end, Ouija feels like a rather joyless distant cousin of 2009’s Drag Me to Hell
—DH
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