Okay let's all gather around and play this board game. Now this game has its own urban legends floating around it and its legacy has it dipped in the supernatural world and dripping with all that ecto-plasma slime that fills peoples nightmares. This one board game if you can tell yourself its only a game. This game is called Ouija! The history of this game dates back to 1890 when Elijah Bond created the game as a novelty item. Never did he figure his creation would become a tool in seance's to contact the dead. But sometimes the dead aren't the loved ones we are talking to, it ends up being something far, far worse and more sinister than anyone can expect.
The movie opens on two young girls about to begin playing with the ouija board but they're interrupted by the sister of one the girls and the movie jumps to present time where both friends are now teenagers. One of the girls, Debbie uses the board but becomes frightened of what she learned from her experience of using the board alone and decides to burn the board as a way of being rid of it. She figures she'd call her best friendnthe other girl from the opening scene, Laine. Whos concern for her friend is only met with rejection as she is sent away by her and this is where the movies plot takes place as Debbie becomes possessed and kills herself by hanging herself.
Now over the course of the movie Laine becomes the main character of this film and rounds up her friends to try and contact Debbie via the Ouija board to find out why she killed herself to help them put to rest that their believes their own friend couldn't have just simply commited suicide. At first the group of friends think they have contacted her from beyond the grave but eventually it becomes apparent that the spirit they contacted was not Debbie but something far worse then they could've expected. This is where the movie could've used some real life experience stories and try to blend them into this movie but they chose to make this film as scary as they could with a PG-13 rating. I'm sorry but with a rating like that cheap scares are meant to scare children not adults. If they would've went with an R rating trust me this movie would've done alot better and not come off like just another teenage supernatural thriller.
Now as most of you can figure out the friends soon start dropping like flies and it only makes Laine become a detective of sorts to figure out what the hell is really going on here. Eventually she diacovers that the house Debbie lived in housed a mother who conducted seances with the boards and used her own daughters in the experiments with the undead. Pretty much having her kids become the body for the spirit to speak through but with any supernatural phenomena something goes wrong and people die because of it. Now this is where Lin Shaye pops up and well damn this woman has made a late career of playing someone in these kind of films. She olays one of the daughters of the family that once owned Debbie's house and own mother conducted those seances. She spins a good story and well its no surprise to what her real intentions were in this film as it turns out she is really not who she made herself out to be. And the two sisters set out to end this all before they all die because of it.
Now as with most PG-13 horror films you don't get the whole bang of fright and gore. Now this film didn't need the gore because of its content and that being a supernatural ghost story it had its fright factor seriously diminished because it really wasn't that scary to be honest. I mean it was to me alot better than some of the similar titles that appeared on the big screen last year and lets face Annabelle was a huge let down as compared to its predecessor The Conjuring. Now I've seen better films that used the Ouija board (Witchboard and Long Time Dead) and were alot more frightening than this movie and then there are those films that were good or okay that were still better than this film. But deep down I will admit I enjoyed this movie not for the scare factor but for how the story evolved over the course of time but the ending like always only hindered the film itself and killed the mood for me. I was hoping for something more, along the lines of one final scare or they left something undone or changed that in the end bites them in the ass. But thats like living in hell and asking for ice water. So thats my wishful thinking shot down on flames and this film though slightly better then one of the big and hugely hyped horror films of 2014 does fall flat and leaves one to wonder why. Wait Michael Bay produced it. That explains it but with this movie my childhood doesn't feel like its been raped or made to cry cause I will say I was never allowed to play with this board game ever and trust me, I have nothing cause I have no real experience with this game. Maybe one day I will but I doubt my conscious is going to allow me to do it cause I don't really trust what could be on the other side talking to me......
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