Sunday, 2 November 2014

Film Review - Ouija




Bored Games
Film: Ouija
Cast: Olivia Cooke, Darren Kagasov, Ana Koto
Directed by: Stiles White
Duration: 1 hr 30 mins
Rating: * 1 / 2

Ouija is the debut of director Stiles White and you wish they had never made this film.  With the script that doesn’t even bother to make an attempt to convince the audience, this lame story could have been written by anyone who has seen three horror films in his or her life.

Ouija started off as a board game, urban legends gave it s status of something that can summon spirits and hence now it is the subject of a horror film. Going by the conversations overheard from not-so-smart teens holding smartphones, many of them were actually discussing how this ‘spirit’ business is true. Ramadhir Singh was right in Gangs of Wasseypur when he said “Jab tak Hindustan mein cinema hai log ch***ya bante rahenge” (As long as there are movies in this country, people will continue to get fooled).  I think it extends beyond the country too.

As for this film, a group of friends get all upset when one of their friends commits suicide by hanging herself. We don’t see a single cop investigate the death. Instead Laine (Olivia Cook) takes it upon herself to find out how her best friend died. Apparently it was an Ouija board that invoked the spirit and as we are told, “connections once made with a spirit are difficult to break” 

How I wish I could establish a similar connection with my BSNL internet.

Needless to add, some of the friends are going to be gobbled up by the ‘spirit’ especially when they enter attics in the middle of the night and of course the cursory background story of the haunted house and it tries to be clever by twisting it a bit but by then all is lost.

There are the standard boo moments of someone getting pulled away or someone suddenly appears at the door and the sound design guy should get more credit for that than anyone else.

Forget Ouija, read the newspapers instead. There are more horror stories in that these days. 

Published in The Navhind Times on 2nd Nov 2014

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