Movie Review: Ouija

Based off the original game itself which has been spooking many for over 125 years,  Ouija movie features to be one of this seasons true thrillers.The movie follows a group of friends who must face their fears after a dark spirit is awakened. The first scene opens up to a young Laine Morris (Played by Olivia Cooke) and Debbie Galardi (Played by Shelley Hennig). Cooke can be noted for her appearances in other horrors, such as The Quiet Ones, and The Signal.  Henning herself made appearances on Days of Our Lives, while also starring in the CW series, The Secret Circle.

Moving on, Morris and Galardi are found playing with the Ouija board, the two explain the game in the opening scene, and this introduces you to the one and only Ouija board.

We move on to a present time, Debbie and Laine are now in their early adult years. Debbie lives with her parents in the house that will be the main setting for most of the movie. Throughout the first thirty minutes of the movie, you can notice the stereotypical first scares of a horror movie. The cliche wind blowing outside that somehow opens up every door in the house, the stove top turning on by itself, lights flickering, etc. The fact that every light in the house but one is on also reflects the dark and mysterious feeling that these movies present, and this continues on throughout the movie. Further on, the spirit itself as well as the board overtake Debbie, and she kills herself while home alone one night. It is now up to the group, and mainly Debbie’s best friend Laine, to find answers to Debbie’s unexpected death.

Although the movie has a good storyline, I wasn’t as jumpy as I figured I might be. There was the occasional good scare, but overall I wasn’t hiding my eyes behind my hands or anything along those lines. This coming from me, and sadly I can admit I’m an easily scared guy. To expand on the storyline, in your typical scary movie it’s more of the scares rather than having any sense of a good story. This movie presents otherwise. The storyline makes sense and has a surprising plot twist towards the end of the movie. At this point I myself was about to walk out because I thought the movie was over, but to my surprise the story had only just reached it’s climax.

Overall, If I had to grade the movie on storyline, it would be recieve a pretty fair rating.

On the other hand, it’s a scary movie, it’s supposed to freak you out. In this case though as previously stated, I didn’t scare as much as I figured. Despite this lack of scares, I still enjoyed the movie as a whole. Also paying the matinee price made it even more worth it. It may not go down as a classic October fright night movie, but it’s still worth watching if you’re up for a scary movie night. Rating (7.15/10)