CREDIT: UNIVERSAL PICTURES
Despite some minor flaws, Ouija: Origin of Evil is an effective and entertaining horror film.

Ouija: Origin of Evil is a paranormal horror film about a little girl named Doris who is possessed by evil spirits channeled through a Ouija board. This conduit for evil is part of her single mother, Alice Zander’s, fortune telling business run with the help of her two daughters out of their home in the ‘60s.

Alice’s teenage daughter Linda sneaks out her bedroom window one night to go to a party with three of her friends where they play with a Ouija board.

The characters have a good dynamic and this scene is potent with family-friendly humour but it feels genuine and it works. When Linda first arrives her friend, who is hosting the party at her mother’s house, assures her that her mother won’t be back until later. She shows Linda that her mother left out all of her “coffee” which is out of frame. Later, Linda’s mother catches her and picks her up, saying in the car “I can smell your breath”. It’s weird that the creators of this film decided that the same audience who is mature enough to handle jump scares of a body hanging by a rope around it’s neck from banister apparently isn’t mature enough to handle alcohol as a subject matter. One must assume the creators shied away from depicting underage drinking to avoid controversy, but they still wanted to include a relatable, generic teen issue for a teen audience. The result is awkward and confusing.

The special effects are the highlight of the movie. There are plenty of paranormal special effects, face morphing and stretching, crawling on walls, all realistic, edited for maximum impact and never overdone. The constant diversity of the scary special effects and the clever, calculated way in which they are spaced out over the duration of the film and the pacing of the movie overall ensures that every time a scary special effect happens it’s something new and unexpected.

The characters in this movie are pretty one dimensional which makes them hard to get invested in because they don’t seem real, which means that although this movie catches you off guard quite often it rarely actually scares you. The acting tends to feel cheesy during the setup but it gets progressively more believable as things intensify.

The soundtrack of Ouija: Origin of Evil consists of a few old school style rock and roll songs, jazz recordings and a subtle, effective score. The songs feel thoughtfully selected as they consistently enhance the scenes they are in and provide another level of emotional impact. The film score has a generic, traditional modern horror soundtrack feeling with familiar synth tones and jump scare sound effects, but it serves its purpose faultlessly and intensifies every scary moment.

Overall Ouija: Origin of Evil is a simple, fun and a well done horror movie. It would have been more engrossing and in turn scarier if the characters had been fleshed out a bit more, but this movie still manages to satisfy expectations and accomplish exactly what it sets out to do.