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Review of Ouija: Origin of Evil

I had as much hope as one can be expected to conjure up for a big studio project about a board game when I saw the first Ouija film. Still, I somehow got even less than my low expectations dictated would be reasonably acceptable. Despite this response I went into the follow-up, Ouija: Origin of Evil (a prequel), with some vague hope that it would at least be slightly improved. This hope came courtesy of the man helming the project, Mike Flanagan.

In the last handful of years Flanagan has directed a brilliant and refreshing home invasion movie called "Hush" and, later, one of the best Stephen King adaptations to date in "Gerald's Game". This garnered much good will in my book and gave Ouija: Origin of Evil a fighting chance.

While the use of the titular occult witchboard is really horror trope by now it has rarely been used to great effect in the past. Unfortunately, this ends up being yet another casualty to be heaped into the bunch. The movie ends up being little more than a transparently weak attempt to emulate the vastly superior Conjuring films with it's retro setting and gradual affliction of the inhabitants of a home after an ominous event triggers the activity. However, it garners none of the credibility of those selfsame flicks and instead feels like a gimmick (complete with digital cigarette burns).

Everything seems to be to prim and proper to come off as realistic and the effects and scares are far too visible and cliched to build tension or to remain believable. While Wan made negative space and pacing a white knuckle experience in The Conjuring, Flanagan airs everything out in the open and expects us to respond to silly effects and entities torn straight out of Wan's universe. Some are downright laughable in how ineffectually rendered they are. And overdependence on CGI also greatly mars the film's ability to send chills down the spine.

Now, you might say I'm just being biased toward one product or the other. I'm the first to admit that Origin of Evil is a superior product to it's predecessor but it is far to much a pastiche of cliches and standards from superior films to stand out on it's own. On top of that it seems like what it is exactly...a studio film.

That is not to say that the deck was stacked against Flanagan by nature of the material being so familiar and trope heavy. Paco Plaza took virtually the same scenarios and circumstances and made "Veronica" in 2017 and proved that you can make something so familiar incredibly good and effective.

In the end, Ouija: Origin of Evil is an abject failure in almost every sense of the word. I could see some of the elements working on their own or in other circumstances but the product as a whole is downright forgettable and, worse, laughable. Watch "Veronica" instead if you want this idea done horrifying justice.
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Added by Movie Maniac
5 years ago on 30 July 2018 10:09