“Ouija” might just be an example of anti-product placement.
If you have a Ouija board at home and see the new movie inspired by the Hasbro toy, you will want to blow the dust off the box, toss it into the fire or trash and hope it doesn’t reappear and freak you out.
As girls, best friends Debbie and Laine fooled around with a Ouija board and the planchette, which slides around the surface as you lightly rest your fingertips on it. But when teenage Debbie (Shelley Hennig) unexpectedly commits suicide while home alone, Laine (Olivia Cooke, “Bates Motel” and “Me & Earl & the Dying Girl”) decides to use the board to say goodbye and to ask some questions.
Starring: Olivia Cooke, Ana Coto, Daren Kagasoff, Bianca Santos, Douglas Smith, Shelley Hennig.
Rating: PG-13 for disturbing violent content, frightening horror images, and thematic material.
She entices her sister, Sarah (Ana Coto) and three friends (Daren Kagasoff, Douglas Smith and Bianca Santos) to go to Debbie’s conveniently unoccupied house and try to communicate with her dead friend. Bad idea, just like when the expectant dad buys the Annabelle doll or Janet Leigh pulls off the highway in “Psycho,” although “Ouija” isn’t in the same category as either of those movies.
Still, the fivesome unleash a dark force that wants to pull more of them across the curtain separating life and death or, here, the spirit world.
“Ouija” is aimed squarely at the PG-13 audience with its teen targets, its standard lack of adult supervision (except for one who counsels, “Do not go seeking answers from the dead. Get rid of the board.”) and its efforts to make moviegoers jump with figures who appear in the dark or are yanked across the floor or forced to make unsanctioned use of dental floss.
Adults who quaked at “The Exorcist” or “The Night of the Living Dead” or “The Conjuring” may feel underwhelmed or find some effects laughable but it seemed to hit a sweet spot with many of the tweens and teens at a preview. Why, some of them even quit sneaking peeks at their phones and one could be heard asking as she filed out, “Are they saying this is a true story?”
No, that was just a creepy coda but there was a note of trepidation in her voice.
First Published: October 24, 2014, 4:00 a.m.
