Ouija (2014) is a horror film about a group of friends who awaken a dark spirit from an ancient board. It is also, at times, a film about a very specific kind of boredom. Stiles White directs from a script he co-wrote with Juliet Snowden, and the result is a movie that understands its premise better than it executes it.
Trailer, via Universal Pictures.
The Setup
The film opens with Debbie, played by Shelley Hennig, recalling a childhood game of Ouija with her best friend Laine, played by Olivia Cooke. In the present day, Debbie throws her board into the fire and tells Laine something strange happened to it. After Laine leaves, the board reappears in Debbie’s bedroom. Debbie becomes possessed and hangs herself inside her home.
Laine attends Debbie’s wake with her boyfriend, Trevor, played by Daren Kagasoff, her sister, Sarah, played by Ana Coto, her friend, Isabelle, played by Bianca A. Santos, and Debbie’s boyfriend, Pete, played by Douglas Smith. The five friends meet at Debbie’s house and use her board to try communicating with her. Strange things happen, and a presence smashes Pete’s hand and face into a mirror.
The Game
The mechanics of the Ouija board are simple. Players lay their fingers on the planchette, and it moves across the letters to spell out messages. In the film, the board communicates with a spirit calling itself “DZ.” Laine sees the image of a little girl with her mouth sewn shut, who warns them to run because her mother is coming.
The game is the engine of the plot, and the film spends a lot of time showing friends gathered around it. What it does not spend enough time doing is making those gatherings feel tense. The board’s movements are meant to be frightening, but the film leans on jump scares and loud noises rather than dread.
The Case Files
Isabelle is possessed and killed while preparing a bath. Laine and Pete search Debbie’s attic and find a box of old photographs belonging to the previous residents. While researching the family’s history, they learn of a little girl named Doris Zander who went missing. Doris’ sister, Paulina, now an old woman committed to a psychiatric hospital, explains that their mother was a medium who used Doris as a vessel for the dead to speak through. Their mother went mad and sewed Doris’ mouth shut, killing her.
Paulina tells Laine that there is a secret room in the house where Laine must find Doris’ hidden body and unsew her mouth so the girl can banish the spirits. The case files are the film’s strongest stretch, because they ground the supernatural in something tangible: a family history, a locked room, a secret. The problem is that the film spends too much time on the board and not enough on the investigation.
The Cast
Olivia Cooke carries the film as Laine, and her performance is the reason the movie works at all. Her fear feels real, even when the scares around her do not. Daren Kagasoff plays Trevor with a steady presence, and Douglas Smith’s Pete gets some of the film’s best lines. The rest of the cast fills out the ensemble, but few get room to breathe.
Keep telling yourself it’s just a game.
That tagline captures the film’s central tension: the idea that the board is harmless, and the idea that it is not. The film wants both at once, and it cannot hold them together.
The Numbers
Ouija grossed $103.6 million worldwide on a $5–8 million budget. That is a real number, and it is worth noting alongside the critical reception, which was negative. The film’s success came from audiences, not from reviewers.
The production credits include Jason Blum, Michael Bay, Andrew Form, Bradley Fuller, and Bennett Schneir. They produced it, and they also produced The Possession, which was written by Snowden and White. A prequel, Ouija: Origin of Evil, directed by Mike Flanagan, was released in 2016 and received much more positive reviews.
The Verdict
Ouija is a film that knows its premise and forgets its execution. The board is a compelling object, and the case files are a compelling hook, but the middle stretches suffer from repetition and cheap scares. It is a film that wants to be scary and settles for loud.
It is a competent, sometimes engaging horror movie that never quite earns its scares. It is worth watching for Olivia Cooke’s performance and the case files, but not for the Ouija sessions themselves.
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