Delayed Reaction: Ouija: Origin of Evil

Premise: A family discovers that they can communicate with their dead father with their Ouija board, only to realize that something more nefarious is happening.

Maybe board games aren't such a bad idea for movies after all. Hear me out!

My gut reaction to hearing that a studio is developing a board game into a movie is, like most people, disgust. It sounds lazy. Creatively bankrupt even. Producers will take any name familiarity they can find and turn it into a quick buck. You know, the standard complaints. And yes, there are some games that really have no business getting made into movies. What could you do with Sorry? How about Yahtzee? But think about it. Most movies are just a gimmick made into a story. The Matrix is just "what if we were all living in a computer simulation?". That Thing You Do is just "what's it like to be a one hit wonder?"  The only thing that makes board game movies different than movies inspired by other things is the licensing fee.

The part that gets tricky is figuring out how much the gameplay of the board game needs to be integrated into the movie. Clue is a quite excellent movie because it pulls just the right amount from the game. It uses the characters with the fun names, the basic style of the game, and the general layout of the house. They took those bones and fleshed them out with proper casting, funny dialogue, and a twisty fun story. Meanwhile, Battleship was panned because it went too far. Instead of just being about battleships trying to find each out in the vast ocean (an idea with a lot of potential), it shoehorns in the grid system from the game. And, honestly, that isn't even what makes the movie bad. The bad stuff is the ridiculous characters and the decision to make the enemies sea aliens. I stand by the fact that Battleship isn't a bad idea for a movie. It just can't be the entire idea. Really, if someone made a Monopoly movie and wrote it like Wall Street, who's to say that wouldn't be good?

This all leads to Ouija. This is an obvious horror premise. The first Ouija movie was quite poorly received though. No one really cares about an evil Ouija board. That's taking the idea too literally (See: Truth or Dare). Instead, Ouija: Origin of Evil uses the Ouija board as a launching point. It's actually more of a haunted house story. The Ouija board is just a conduit for the evil spirit. I ended up liking this movie a good amount. It helps that it was directed by Mike Flannagan (Oculus), who is probably my favorite horror director right now. This has a lot of Flannagan trademarks. Confined or limited location. Discrete malevolent force. Open-ended conclusion that suggests the malevolent force has won. He basically just thinks of the Ouija board as a fun prop for a good story.

It's not perfect. The Ouija board gets thrown in a bit more than needed. I don't fully understand the logic of it all, or even the decision of who gets killed and when. But, for a PG-13 horror movie produced by a toy manufacturer, this was pretty good.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend