Movie Review: Ouija (2014)

The movie stars Olivia Cooke, Ana Coto, Darren Kagasoff, Bianca Santos and Shelley Hennig.

My wife and I had seen this movie before, but it was a long time ago and I couldn't remember a whole lot about it (other than we didn't enjoy it all that much). After seeing the prequel film and enjoying it, I decided to give this movie another try. Unfortunately, I just didn't like it as much.

I think the main problem with this film is it tends to drag things out a little bit too much. Other than a couple jump scares, the movie just lacked any real action. In other words, there was a lot of build up and, toward the end, something finally happened. And, yes, you could probably say the same thing about the prequel, to an extent, but at least that movie managed to have a bit of a creepy vibe to it. This film was just dull.

Let's put it this way. The friends make contact with a spirit they believe is Debbie (Hennig) then go home/to school/to work. They then make contact again and realize it is an evil spirit before once again going home/to school. Heck, even the death of one of the group wasn't enough to keep them from going to class. It was nice of that evil spirit to give them time to study for that math test.

I also could describe the movie as being predictable. As I mentioned, I remembered absolutely nothing about the movie from the first time we saw it but was able to predict various deaths based on obvious foreshadowing, especially when the movie showed the pool near the beginning. It can't be said enough, predictability and horror films don't mix.

The thing that irritated me the most about this movie was how it also sort of managed to hurt the prequel as well. If you are going to make two movies that are connected to each other, you should at least attempt to have the important details match up.

To be fair, I know this movie was made first and it was technically the prequel that screwed that up. Regardless, it made me regret watching this movie even more than I already would have had I not seen the prequel.

This was a movie that had some potential but fails to reach it because of poor execution. I would have liked it a lot better if there had been a little less talking and a lot more action.

My Grade: C-