Ouija
DIRECTOR: Stiles White, WRITTEN BY: Stiles White, Juliet Snowden, STARRING: Olivia Cooke, Ano Coto, Douglas Smith, RUN TIME: 89 minutes, RELEASE: 2014
A girl is mysteriously killed after recording herself playing with an ancient Ouija Board, which leads to a close group of friends to investigate this board. They later find out that some things aren't meant to be played with, especially the 'other side'.
I'm sure that pretty much most people are well aware what a Ouija board is. I, for one, have dabbled with them on several occasions in my reckless younger days, much to the disappointment of absolutely sod all happening on every single occasion (some might say predictably). My point is that most children have given it a go at some point in their misguided youth, so this film actually sparked my interest. If they got this right, it could be a fantastic and original little horror. If they got it wrong, then it would be a complete mess of spectacular scope. Again, as per usual, the trailer looked pretty good. So, in I went.
Oh... They did not get it right.
Instead of giving us a wonderfully creepy and legend based horror, what 'Ouija' actually succeeded in doing was delivering a below par horror (and it is really pushing the boundaries to call it that) that 'borrowed' as many aspects of other films in the genre and throwing all the standard clichés for good measure. This total waste of 89 minutes was utterly predictable from the slow and boring start to the underwhelming finish. Laughably so. The one thing I do not want to be doing when watching a horror is laughing.
There is just nothing redeeming about this rubbish whatsoever. I'm trying to look for something constructive to say about it but, I must admit, I'm struggling. Any typical horror moment that you would expect to be in a film with absolutely no imagination was in it. There were so many jump scare moments that I lost count and every one of them only made me hate the film more and brought me ever closer to a boredom induced coma. 'Ouija' shamelessly rips off ideas from other films, most noticeably 'Final Destination' (2000), which I happened to have liked. This film could easily have been labelled as some awful re-imagining of it. 'Ouija' racked up about as much tension as snail trying to chase me down from the end of my garden. I just couldn't care less about it. The direction, the soundtrack the...well.. Everything was completely uninspired.
The cast was just fine. That is to say, if you are looking to watch a film with a completely two-dimensional cast and characters then this will do you 'just fine'. I think that I have spent about as much time as I have the strength to do so talking about this film. It's bland, lacking any originality, predictable, mind-numbingly boring, laughable, a total rip-off and spectacularly uneventful. Watch it if you so desire, but my advice would be to steer clear and dedicate your time to a much better horror. I highly recommend 'The Babadook' instead.