Ouija

Holds your interest throughout though it's not on a par with, say, Hell House. The cast is attractive and capable and the effects pretty good. The main reason to watch is Ana Coto, a young actress as full of charm as a peach is full of sweetness. If I had my way she'd be a star.

"Ouija" has a pretty cool and creepy story to work with, an old spirit board discovered in the attack, suicides and haunting, a creepy legend that connects the board to the house of the suicide girl, it is all perfect horror subject matter. Unfortunately there is something missing from "Ouija" that makes it more spectacle than horror. The scenes build nicely through suspense, shadowy, eerie atmosphere, and great sound effects, but the end result falls flat. The big scares aren't really scary.

The cast give well enough performances of these haunted characters. The direction and cinematography are equally stellar. You can tell money was well spend in production, "Ouija" has all the right components to be a real good horror film, unfortunately it all stays pretty PG. The horror seems almost pulled back into safer zones when they should have took that thrilling momentum and gone for some major scares. Not sure why they chose to keep things subdued. I mean really for what "Ouija" is it is a nice, creepy Halloween horror film based on an occult staple-the spirit board. And there are a few scare-ish moments that use the sudden shock gimmick to get a jump out of the movie-goer but still this film is far less exciting than say "Insidious" or "The Conjuring".

Okay...so. Normally when you see a PG-13 horror movie come out, it's either going to totally suck, or rock. This movie was actually, in the middle. It did not suck and it did not rock. *It was basically a mixture of Insidious and Final Destination.* The scares in the movie were typically those corny jump-scares, but I have to say, they weren't bad. (Or really that good, either.) The thing about PG-13 horror movies is that they aren't really that scary at all. This movie was alright, I wouldn't say scary, but it would be enough to scare a little kid because of the loud noises and scary images. The story is okay. It kind of gets better and worse and better and worse. In the beginning, the story is declining, getting worse and worse, because of all the cliché and disappointing climaxes. Then, it sort of gets better... and then back down to really bad. Then, in the second half of the movie, it starts to get really, really, intense and actually good. When you think it's over, it isn't. But when it is over, you wouldn't think that was the end. The acting was.. okay? In the beginning the acting totally STANK! I mean, it was really fake. But it got better and better as the movie progressed. The main character, Laine (Olivia Cooke) did an okay job of acting. She was the type in the movie that was sort of dumb, but in the end turned out to be a bit clever. All the things in the movie that happen are mostly things that you'd expect to happen. The special effects really were disappointing, when the monster/entity (not revealing any more than that) is shown, WOW are the effects SO FAKE.

Lastly, don't let reviews change your mind about a movie. They are simply opinions. Just because this movie has under average ratings doesn't mean that you will automatically think this movie will and always will stink. Don't always look at the negative sides of a movie. :) And also, be careful. On my trip for watching this movie, there was a young delinquent cracking jokes to his "encouraging" friends, disrupting the full experience, so I may have missed some good parts of the movie.

This movie never had a chance of being good - it's a modern horror movie based on a board game. Still, it could have been campy fun. After all, it is a board game. But no, Ouija is not fun. It's very, very boring.

Everything about this movie fails on so many levels. The writing doesn't have a single original or interesting idea, and it doesn't even make sense in the end. The acting is dull, though that's largely due to the fact that our characters spend the majority of the film moping around their houses and at school. There's no way of gaining momentum of suspense when nothing is happening. The characters play the board game a couple times and there are a handful of cheap jump scares and bad effects. That's it. The direction is flat and indifferent. Worst of all, it's not scary in the least.

Ouija is the absolute bare minimum for a horror movie, completely devoid of energy, inspiration, and any interest in telling an original story.

Horror is one of those genres that creates such voting and reviewing hostility on internet sites. You can guarantee that no matter what new horror film comes out it will garner posts on the likes of IMDb as being "the worst horror film I have ever seen". That is until the next big release, where we will go around the houses again...

Ouija is just a standard boo-jump horror picture with a standard story line. Any expectation of any thing more would have (will do) led (lead) to great disappointment. It's one of those horror films that asks you to turn off the lights and just enjoy the quick spooky ride, then you get off the ride and quickly move on to something else. It's neither "the worst horror film of all time" or anything remotely original. It's Boo-Jump horror 101, so buy into that or leave it well alone. 6/10