Saturday, 09 October 2021 12:55
Ouija: Origin of Evil
OUIJA: ORIGIN OF EVIL
US, 2016, 99 minutes, Colour.
Elisabeth Reaser, Lulu Wilson, Annalisa Basso, Henry Thomas, Doug Jones.
Directed by Mike Flanagan.
Checking on the number of films with Ouija in the title, it appears that there are quite a few, many of them in recent years. Does this mean that Ouija boards are becoming more popular? Or that they are a handy way of introducing variations on horror films?
This version, which is a prequel to the film, Ouija, 2014, immediately shows seances and the possibilities for a scam – although Alice Xander and her two daughters conduct the seances but try to be kind and nonjudgemental to their clients. The older daughter sneaks out at night to join friends who have a Ouija board and they play it, highlighting how people can put pressure on the board to get the answers required.
This would hardly be the basis for a horror film! Alice Xander (Elizabeth Reaser) decides it wouldn’t do any harm to buy a Ouija board as a prop for future seances. And they try it out, attempting to make contact with the deceased husband and father – with unexpected results for them and expected results for us. There is something obviously sinister about this Ouija board.
The film will remind horror addicts of scary scenes in many another film, and some overtones of The Exorcist, as well as some monster creatures – who, not to our surprise, have been inhabiting this house and listening to all that is going on, a background of a sadistic doctor in the concentration camps in World War II and migrating to the United States, still being sinister. The date for this prequel is 1967.
1967 is interesting as a date for the priest character in the film, Father Tom, played by ET’s Henry Thomas. Henry Thomas is closer to 50 than 40 and it is revealed that before becoming a priest he had been married with his wife dying. He seems quite a sensible priest, offering good advice, the principal of the school which the girls attend, instrumental in solving a puzzle about mysterious writing that appears in the house, detailing that story of the monster in World War II. There are a few frissons about clerical celibacy when he invites Alice to dinner at a restaurant, solely to talk about the situation of the girls and the mysterious happenings at home. and, like a good priest, he investigates the Ouija board in order to deceive the demon, but…
As with The Exorcist and some other films, it is the little girl who is the key to the proceedings, who seems to be open to the seemingly supernatural, who can be possessed by demons, speaking different voices, experiencing all kinds of physical contortions while possessed. Lulu Wilson is particularly effective as the little girl, Doris, often stealing the show from the adults. Her character was central to the original Ouija film. Annalise Basso is the teenage daughter trying to help her sister as well as her mother – and with a sympathetic boyfriend.
As well as the scary atmosphere, made scary for many audiences because this is a domestic scene, there are quite a number of jump cuts in the editing for people to leap out of their seats and/or to scream.
Horror fans will notice the name of Lin Shaye in the final credits – linking her to Ouija as well as to the Insidious films and The Conjuring films to which this film is indebted for background in haunted houses and evil spirits. But, the piece of advice: audiences must wait until after the final credits for a new scene, the scene in which Lin Shaye appears.
All in all, not bad.
1. A title that and expectations? Twists and perspectives?
2. A prequel to the 2014 film, giving the background, establishing characters?
3. Audiences and their interest in Ouija boards, seances? Reality? Scams? Belief or not?
4. 1967, the American home, the streets, schools and offices, the interiors of the house, the rooms, upstairs, the basement, the hidden laboratory? The musical score?
5. The horror traditions, the use of the conventions, seances and scams, scares, edit jumps, possessions, hauntings, monsters, deformed faces? Confrontations?
6. The family situation, the dead father, the clients for the seances, the details, sympathy, the father and his concern, the sceptical daughter, her wanting money? The family considering that they were helping people? The daughters, at school, their ages, grief of their father, Lina and her participation in seances with her mother? Doris, younger, inquiring? Her homework, being teased at school by the boys?
7. Lina, going out, deceiving her mother, her mother collecting her? The Ouija game? The introduction of the theme, Alice deciding to buy one, the use, its effect? Doris enter questions? Her becoming possessed? The Ouija board and understanding what was in people’s minds and not their deceptions?
8. The effect on Doris, the ordinary girl at nine, watching television, grief that her father, seeing the monster in the mirror and her bending over? The contortions, her face? The voices and the answers? At school, her being teased, the slingshot wounding the boy? The written homework? Father Tom, is good advice and affirmation? Her blackening the doll’s lips? The Polish documents? The confrontation with Lina’s boyfriend, going down to the cellar, getting him to put his arm in the hole, is hanging? The creatures, the voices, the savagery, Marcus and his story, the confrontation with Lina, her mother, her disappearance?
9. Lina, her age, grief, going out at night, her work at school, her boyfriend, her mother threatening him, his visit to play records in her room, the kiss? Her helping Doris? The Polish writing? The encounters with father Tom, giving him the information? In the house, the apparition of her father, going down to the cellar, possessed, killing her mother? The aftermath in the institution?
10. The mother, coping, going to the school, the issue of the homework and the writing, the Ouija board, the answers about her husband? Discussions with father Tom, going to dinner with him? The Polish document, upstairs? Down in the cellar, the climax, her being bound, her death?
11. Father Tom, a Catholic priest in 1967, principal of the school, his age, a widower, his memories of his wife? His helping Doris in the yard, affirming her? Helping Lina? The dinner with Alice? His decision to try out the Ouija board, is deceiving the board, going down to the basement, the discovery of the laboratory, his being possessed, shutting the door to save Alice and his own death?
12. The story of Marcus, the nun translating the documents, World War II, the experiments in the camp, then liberated, coming to America, experiments, deaths, the bodies in the basement, in the hole in the wall? Marcus and his being the monster? Taking possession of people? His listening in the house to everything that was going on? And the rule that the Ouija board was not to be used in a graveyard – and the house is a graveyard?
13. The boyfriend, nice, the visits, Alice and her warnings, the records with Lina, going to the basement, deceived by Doris? Hanging?
14. Scares, atmosphere, the plausibility of this kind of horror story?