Ouija: Origin of Evil

Cast: Annalise Bosso, Elizabeth Reaser, Lulu Wilson, Henry Thomas and Halle Charlton.

Director: Mike Flanagan

Release Date: 2016

Running Time: 1hr 39 minutes

Genre: Horror

Rating: PG-13

Synopsis:

Set in Los Angeles, 1967, a mother and her two daughters add a new idea to bolster their seance scam business, inviting a very evil presence into their home.

Mike Flanagan is behind the camera this time as he directs the prequel to "Ouija", "Ouija:Origin of Evil" is the backstory of the characters Lina and Doris Zander. Alice Zander runs a scam seance business fooling her customers into believing that she can contact the dead. Alice soon stumbles across an Ouija board when she decides it might be fun to add it to her act, however pretty soon some pretty spooky things start happening. It becomes apparent pretty early on that Alice is widowed and it's had quite the impact on her two girls, her eldest daughter Lina has a hard time telling her mother that she's interested in boys, one boy in particular, Mikey and Doris is bullied constantly at school, by class mates who believe her mother is a witch.

Lulu Wilson steals the show as Doris Zander, her performance is pretty good, there are plenty of spooky scenes involving her character and her sister Lina. Henry Thomas you may recognize as the young boy from Steve Spielberg's hit movie "E.T", Thomas plays a father who works at the girls school and before long starts talking their mother into what she's doing is wrong and dangerous. The acting in the first film really wasn't that great, unfortunately for this movie its not the acting that's the problem, but more the storyline. Flanagan really has no right into fooling his audiences into believing this is a prequel to the original movie. The characters are there but the storyline sadly isn't. Unfortunately the storyline isn't even remotely interesting or believable, making for a pretty boring experience for audiences. To say this is a horror movie is quite an embarrassment.

I'm not particularly impressed how Flanagan has chosen to direct this film, it's almost a backstory within a backstory. There's nothing particularly impressive about how the movie is shot apart from some nice close ups of Doris Zander communicating to an evil spirit and some pretty cool special effects. The film itself however is lit up quite well, although the lighting doesn't always add to the tone of the film. The most disappointing thing, is the fact that the storyline isn't even remotely scary, it's not thrilling, it's not chilling, it's almost like Flanagan chose to take moments from "Inglorious Bastards" and "Insidious" and add it to his script. The production design looks very tacky and poor the only similarities is that it's the same house from the first movie, just like the original storyline explains.

One of the most disappointing horror movies I've seen in a very long time, the acting isn't always on point but for the majority of the film is pretty good, sadly that and the special effects are the only good components of this movie. Too many directors copy one another and assume if they have a possessed character talking like an evil spirit it will add to the suspense of the movie, sadly it doesn't. There's nothing original about this film at all. Very, very disappointing.

2/5 stars