Nightmare Fuel 2016 Day 21: Ouijia: Origin of Evil

Hey, so y’all remember a couple years ago when Hasbro pushed through the second of its board game-based film trilogy (the first being the abysmal Battleship)?  Yeah, that fuckin’ Ouija movie?  I know, I know, it sucked.  Hard.  No one liked that turd, and no polishing thereof was attempted by anyone.  It was the director’s first effort, and only effort as of right now.  Damn skippy.  I hated that film.  Deeply.  Mostly because it was by-the-numbers, generic, PG-13 horror made for the lowest possible common denominator.  I guess the strategy worked, though, ’cause the damn thing somehow made back ten times its budget.  A sequel was inevitable, and I was visibly pissed the first time the trailer crossed my eyes’ paths.  Middle fingers were thrust upward toward the screen, believe you me.  Then I saw the damn thing.

Insert actual pleasant surprise.  Seriously.  Ouija: Origin of Evil isn’t really a sequel, but rather a prequel to the original, showing how the spirits involved in that trash heap came to be.  Sounds like horrid idea, right?  That’s what I thought, too, but Blumhouse took a different tack with this film than other franchise entries (I’m looking at you, Annabelle and Sinister 2): they used real filmmakers with talent.

The writer/director here is the same from Oculus, Absentia, and Hush.  That’s right, Mike Flanagan graces the pages of Nightmare Fuel again, and again he brings the noise.  Everything here looks better, with Flanagan’s flare for lighting and framing really on display, creating a solid horror atmosphere that builds suspense and dread throughout the film.  Everything is handled with care and depth, providing actual characterization and competent motivations (for the most part…) for the plot, something the original likely couldn’t even conceive of.

Said plot is set in 1965, where a widow and her two daughters have a psychic reading business in their home.  It’s all smoke and mirrors, but it pays the bills.  When the mother decides to add a Ouija board to the act, the younger daughter actually channels spirits for real.  Things go downhill, though, when she’s fully possessed and some evil shenanigans ensue.

It was great to see the various strategies the family uses to convince people of the truth of their act, from candle-blowers to well-placed magnets.  Everything is handled seriously, as though the characters actually existed in some universe similar to ours.  Even supporting characters, like the girls’ school’s principal, a widower priest who hints at having some attraction to the mother during a date, get fleshed-out back stories and characterizations.  Everything works, even when things start to get a bit loose in the grand finale.

Young Lulu Wilson does very well as the possessed child, toeing the line between overdoing it as a child actor and being truly creepy.  Her monologue regarding the feeling of dying of strangulation is genuinely chilling, somehow without simultaneously coming across as either overly campy or dorky.  Jump scares exist, but they’re measured and balanced out with more slow-burn chills.  Everything works, even the tissue connecting this thing to the original (complete with Lin Shaye cameo in a post-credit sequence).

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a would-be shovelware sequel turn out so damned well.  And I’m not alone:  Rotten Tomatoes has this one at an 81% (compared to the 7% the original genuinely earned), Metacritic has it at a 65 (compared to the original’s generous 38), and the Midnight Screenings guys found it hard to deal with their surprise.  This film is actually pretty damn good, especially for a PG-13 horror flick, and more than especially for an obligatory sequel to a piece of shit.  Go see it, if for no other reason than to support talented filmmakers.  After this and Hush, I look forward to seeing where Flanagan goes in the future:  He’s got himself a minor fan right now.