An average movie

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much from this movie and the main reason I wanted to watch the damned thing in the first place was because I’m actually interested in the sequel/prequel by Mike Flanagan, probably one of the best horror directors at work nowadays, but I wanted to watch this first installment before. Well, as expected, it turned out to be pretty weak, I’m afraid. Apparently, the makers actually really struggled during the production and about 50% had to be reshot 4 months before the release date which is never a good sign. I have to admit that the concept had some potential though as there is something really creepy about Ouija boards. However, I believe also that it would better worked for a short movie. Indeed, the concept did seem to be too limited to work for a full length feature like this one, even if the running time was even below 90 mins. In my opinion, they seriously stretched out the material and, as a result, it did feel kind of creepy for a while but, soon enough, it became a basic ghost tale mixed up with a rather tedious slasher flick. The fact that the group of friends involved was just so uncharismatic didn’t help, I guess, and I’m not surprised that, except for Olivia Cooke, I had never heard of any of them before. On the other hand, they were not helped by the poor material that they were provided. Eventually, the biggest achievement of this movie was that, right now, I’m wondering even more how Mike Flanagan eventually managed to handle this material since his sequel has a much better reputation than this failed franchise opener. Anyway, to conclude, even if I have seen worse, it was still a rather weak horror flick and I don’t think it is really worth a look, except maybe if you’re a die-hard fan of the genre.

5/10