Review of Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016) by Patrick L — 28 Jan 2017

There was a time when Hollywood was obsessed with period crime dramas which seemed to have spilled on to the horror genre. It could be either the higher supply of Hollywood props leading to discounts or the ease of storytelling without having to deal with modern communication and other technology. Also in the recent times this genre has collectively matured into a less gory and more character driven plots and sometimes featuring popular actors. Ouija, the popular childhood game to invite spirits to answer silly questions forms the basis of this plot but it gets more irrelevant as the story unfolds.

Alice Zander (Elizabeth Reaser) is a recently widowed mother of two - teenage Lina (Annalise Basso) and 9-year old Doris (Lulu Wilson). She runs small scams as a fortune-teller or as someone who talks to spirits out of her house with her daughters as accomplices. She purchases a Ouija board when suggested by Lina for adding it to her props. When they get a notice of foreclosure for her house, Doris finds a package full of money hidden in their basement by previous tenants. This discovery along with solving their present crisis, also brings forward Doris's abilities to really communicate with the spirits that booms her business. Is Doris able to positively use her new ability or is she getting consumed by it?

The movie establishes a moderately happy family where they collectively try to contribute towards running their house. All the standard tropes you would see like a single mother striving to stay above water, a rebellious teenager and her crush, an adolescent handling her bullies at school etc. While this is all well established, the mom's character is shown to be flip-flopping though the tone of the movie still continues to show her in a positive note. Instances like when the mom doesn't try to investigate much further into the money purse discovery, doesn't pay heed to the changes in Doris after her new ability and just pushes on to exploit it etc. With the eventual revelation about the spirit, having the Ouija board in the center of it doesn't make any sense.

The acting is moderately good which has very minimal characters overall much like most other movies of this genre. Most of the scenes either happen indoors or at a school's entrance which means that the entire movie was shot in a shoe-string budget despite its period setting - considering this is observed only in retrospect shows the quality and it is worth to commend the production design of this movie. The atmosphere setup is one of the most important element in a horror movie which it gets right to most extent. But the overall quality of the story or the thrills plays the spoiler where the origin story is very under-cooked and full of holes leaving a lot of content that doesn't make sense. A serious evil doing mischievous things is what I can't comprehend in most horror movies and this movie isn't any different.

Fumbles both on human and other aspect with a passable story and occasional thrill.