OUIJA

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When you first think about the trend of basing a movie on a toy it feels soul crushing. It doesn’t even really matter which movie it is; whether it’s Battleshipor Trolls or G.I. Joe, there’s something about the whole concept that feels off. We live in an age where I.P. is king, and there is seemingly no greater intellectual property than a memory from childhood.

There is definitely somebody out there right this moment bashing together an outline for Furby: The Film. And somebody else has just trudged into an office and said “What if a Tamagotchi came back to Tamagetchya because you didn’t feed it?”

That’s why it’s surprising to me that when I first heard about the idea for Ouija, a movie based on the Ouija board, my stomach didn’t turn at the very premise. It’s a movie based on product licensed to Hasbro, but for some reason in my mind there’s something about Ouija boards that feels otherworldly. I know that’s dumb as hell, but I’ve never really thought of Ouija boards as a thing you could find in the aisles of a long dead 'World 4 Kids'.

Don’t get me wrong, Ouija is still a bad film.

Ouija tells the story of a girl, Laine (Olivia Cooke), whose friend dies under mysterious circumstances. Laine and her pals try to contact the dead girl using a Ouija board but they end up contacting somebody else – OR SOMETHING ELSE – instead. This new supernatural pal keeps writing the words ‘HI FRIEND’ on various surfaces until, one by one, Laine’s friends get offed until the board is destroyed.

If we’re being honest, it is perfectly okay that Ouija isn’t very good, because it is, after all, a movie based on the idea “Ouija board?”. Could you make a good Ouija board movie? Yes, and they did. It’s the prequel to this movie. Ouija: Origin of Evil (from director Mike Flanagan, the man behind Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House and Gerald’s Game and other great scary stuff) is damn fine. If, in your life time, you must watch one Ouija movie, make it the prequel. And don’t worry, you will be able to get your head around the dense mythology of the Ouija board universe.

Now, let’s get to it, where would I fit in?

Well, a lot of horror movies suffer from the trope of having flashlights that cannot seem to stay on. Flashlights in horror movies are always flickering. And I have to say, in my own life I have never had a flashlight flicker on me. I’ve never had a flashlight flicker and then die. I’ve never had a flashlight flicker and then need to be hit to come back to life. I’ve never had a flashlight do anything other than be a flashlight and eventually run out of batteries after a while.

(I am going to call it a flashlight and not a torch, because Ouija is American and they would call it a flashlight but just know, each time I’m writing the word ‘flashlight’ there is a part of my brain that’s thinking “no, you mean ‘torch’”.)

Ouija suffers from this ‘flashlight problem’ more than most spooky movies. A lot more. There were at least three separate occasions where a character was using a flashlight – and they were all using the exact same brand of flashlight – and that flashlight turned itself off mid-use. It happened so often in this movie that I started to wonder if any of the characters might call up the manufacturer to complain about this product.

And that’s where we meet our hero. Ouija was really missing a scene where the main character, Laine, takes a moment away from dealing with a possessed Ouija board to make a call, not to the spirit realm, but to a help desk.