A group of people decide to break out an Ouija board, attempt to speak with spirits, and things go wrong almost immediately. If that premise sounds familiar, it is because Hollywood seems to recycle it two or three times a year. Ouija: Origin of Evil is a sequel that functions as a prequel to the 2014 film simply titled Ouija. You would need the marketing materials to tell you the connection, because these Blumhouse productions have a tendency to blend together after a while—efficiently made horror designed to turn a healthy profit. The quality of the studio’s output varies widely, so approaching one of these films often feels like eating a mystery jelly bean and hoping for the best. Having never seen the original Ouija, I am judging this entry strictly on its own terms.
The story is set in the late 1960s. Alice (Elizabeth Reaser) and her two daughters, Lina and Doris (Annalise Basso and Lulu Wilson), run a modest fortune-telling business out of their home. Alice claims to help grieving clients find closure with departed loved ones; in reality the séances are carefully staged. One night Lina sneaks out with friends and experiments with an Ouija board. Inspired by the idea, Alice decides to incorporate a board into her own act. Things go wrong almost at once. Young Doris begins spending more and more time with the board and speaking of “new friends.” By the time the family recognizes the danger, Doris is firmly under the influence of malevolent spirits that have been waiting inside the house.
The film is well-paced through its first hour. Considerable time is devoted to establishing the family’s circumstances and gradually escalating the supernatural activity. The father has been dead for some time, though the exact circumstances of his death remain vague. There is quiet irony in the fact that a household that profits from helping others process grief has never fully resolved its own. The spirits eventually exploit that unresolved longing, feeding the family exactly what they want to hear in order to deepen their hold—mirroring the emotional manipulation Alice has been practicing on her clients. Lulu Wilson, as Doris, is the standout. She is convincingly unsettling as the increasingly possessed child; the way the camera frames her during the more disturbing moments adds genuine creepiness. Once the board starts answering questions on its own, the warning signs are impossible to miss, yet the family is already too deep in denial and hope to react in time.
Ouija: Origin of Evil is a solid effort within the contemporary horror landscape. It is not the scariest film of its year, but it generates steady tension and grounds the scares in a coherent story rather than relying solely on sudden shocks. The cast is strong across the board, with Wilson carrying much of the eerie atmosphere. The tone is darker than many parents might expect from a PG-13 supernatural thriller, particularly in its treatment of grief and possession. In a franchise sense, the movie also represents a rare win for Hasbro’s film efforts after higher-profile disappointments. The scares, such as they are, stay on the screen rather than at the box office.
Director Mike Flanagan brings a level of craft and patience that elevates the material above standard Blumhouse programming. The period setting is convincingly rendered, the escalation is measured, and the film trusts atmosphere longer than many of its peers. It never reinvents the Ouija-board subgenre, nor does it deliver the kind of lasting dread that defines the strongest horror, but it executes its modest goals with intelligence and care. For a prequel to a largely forgotten earlier film, that is a respectable achievement.
3/5
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