Before watching new movies, I generally try to find out if they’re worth watching without actually finding out anything about the movie itself. that is also generally how I try to write here about films – without actually telling anything about the story line. That is fairly tricky, if I aim to have blog posts longer than fifty words. With that in mind, where does Ouija: Origin of Evil fit in?
Regardless, for me, that’s especially true with new horror movies. I don’t want to find out any twists in advance, but I also don’t want to be disappointed by less than mediocre horror flick. And a good twist is less likely than a bad horror film. I can’t (or won’t) tell you here about any twists, but Ouija was worth it. I did my basic checks: IMDB score, meta score, some super quick googling without reading any of the articles and fortunately ended up going to watch it in the cinemas, just like you should. And like you should with any good horror film. They’re obviously at their best in a big dark hall with massive screen and huge sound system.
Directed by Mike Flanagan, Ouija: Origin of Evil was a pleasant surprise then, as you can gather from above. I almost didn’t bother checking the film out due to not having heard anything positive about the previous Ouija board movie. The director’s name was probably the first clue. I was not familiar with the name and haven’t really seen his earlier films, but it soon became clear Mike knows what he’s doing.
The cast and acting is great, especially Annalise Basso and Lulu Wilson. Elizabeth Reaser, probably the more famous of the three, was ok too although not quite as memorable.
The looks and style of the movie follow the style and look of the genre, which just seems how these things work at the moment. The film mostly reminded me of the first Conjuring movie. But that’s enough, the name of the movie should be clue enough about what’s going to happen. I guess ‘Origin’ in the name refers to the fact this is prequel to the other fairly recent Ouija Board movie, which you can probably happily skip.
