Review of Ouija (2014) by Jakobkross — 23 Jun 2018

It's not enough to call the creators of this film lazy, because even a half-witted lazy person could achieve a mediocre film. I think the people behind this film must be lazy AND stupid. This is what often happens when directors fancy themselves as writers and pay their chums to write a screenplay with them.

The actors don't seem to believe their own reactions, which become more and more flat as the film progresses. Laine in particular appears less and less engaged and interested in the increasingly incredulous scenes. Maybe she took up the use of mind-numbing sedatives to blunt her increasingly desperate self questioning of "Why oh why did I sign up for this joke of a film?!" Well, the director and writers obviously didn't care about the film, so why should they? "Is there a presence here?" they ask the Ouija board, while trying their best exude as little presence as possible themselves, silently hoping that their low impact approach to acting will make them invisible enough, so that people will forget that they were ever associated with this crime against film. The characters have no individual characteristics to the point of being hollow. The dialogue is so shallow and unrealistic that it made me laugh out loud and never allowed me to get immersed into the story. A good film IMO has a solid story delivered by decent actors, and makes me forget that it's a film. Ouija with its repetitive, inconsistent plot twists, parades a sign of "I AM A (BAD) FILM" in every scene. It's as if the "writers" were following a bad screenplay guidebook, hell-bent on using every rookie technique ever invented. Characters state the obvious, they say things that sound unnatural just to reveal information to viewers in a vague attempt of back story and they are suddenly experts on certain things. Without any explanation, Laine is suddenly sure that "Mother is angry". When Laine and Debbies bf find pictures of the people who used to live in Debbie's house, Laine's bf stiffly proclaims: "Judging by these pictures, they were taken in the late 40's, early 50's". Lol, who talks like that?! Certainly not a leather jacket wearing teenage college student, who is apparently also illiterate, because he has to call Laine over to read aloud the article he found about these previous tenants (an article which of course was the first one he found immediately on typing the words into the search engine of his laptop). And mental granny offers no logical reason for her advice of cutting the stitches off DZ's mouth in order to drive away the evil spirit. The highlight of stupidity is when Debbie's spirit appears in the final spirit battle, complete with triumphant background violins.

The trailer resorts to false advertising to trick punters into wasting their time and money on this children's film, which shouldn't be allowed to be categorized as horror. The good reviews here must be the result of paid affiliates and 12 year olds.