An average movie

I didn’t care much about ‘Ouija’ but since this prequel was directed by Mike Flanagan and since it seemed to have a decent reputation, I was quite eager to check it out. To be honest, I didn’t remember much about ‘Ouija’, except that it was pretty lame. I was in fact pretty sure that there was basically no connection between the two movies. It’s only afterwards that I discovered that it was actually taking place in the same house and some of the characters were even actually returning. Anyway, Flanagan did a fine job here, even if he didn’t focus too much on the Ouija board after all. Indeed, in fact, it could have been easily removed and the whole story would still have worked. Anyway, the mood was neat, the end-result was actually pretty creepy and I have to admit that, even if I wasn’t scared sh*tless, I was definitely pretty spooked though. On top of that, even if the characters were not very developed, the Zanders were charismatic enough and I actually cared about what they were going through. Flanagan also uses very often the same actors with all his movies and miniseries (Elizabeth Reaser, Lulu Wilson, Henry Thomas, Kate Siegel) and they were all fine here. Even Annalise Basso, who wasn’t a Flanagan regular, did deliver a solid performance. Eventually, the only thing that didn’t really work out for me was when they tried to explain what was actually going on (which had eventually nothing to do with the Ouija board) which was rather convoluted and not really interesting. However, it was still rather impressive how much Flanagan managed to achieve with some seemingly hopeless material, especially if you would compare his work to the borderline abysmal previous instalment in this franchise. Anyway, to conclude, even if it was maybe not a homerun, it was still a solid horror feature and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.