OUIJA

Debbie dies under mysterious circumstances that suggest suicide. Her best friend, Lane, however, is not convinced that Debbie could have taken her own life and decides to contact her using an Ouija board, a game that she and her friend often played as children to communicate with the afterlife. Supported by her sister Sarah and some friends, Lane attempts to summon the ghost of Debbie, but what responds is a malevolent spirit that begins to kill the young people who awakened it one by one. It was 1890 when Elijah J. Bond and Charles Kennard patented a wooden board with the letters of the alphabet engraved on it, intended to communicate with the dead, but it was not until eleven years later that the Texan William Fuld acquired the product and made it his own, calling it Ouija, a name derived from two affirmations in different languages, French (oui) and German (ja). Since then, the Ouija board has become the most widespread game instrument for communicating playfully with spirits, to the point that, in 1991, the copyright of the product passed into the hands of Hasbro, a company that owns brands such as Transformers and Battleship, which turned it into a board game like any other. Despite the clearly playful character, the Ouija board has greatly influenced the horror imagination, often becoming the instrument of evil in many horror stories and films. Who can forget, in fact, one of the first means through which Regan's demonic possession developed in "The Exorcist"? Or, again, the famous board became the protagonist of scary scenes in "Amityville 3D", "The Hidden" and "Paranormal Activity", up to being the true heart of the action of the "Spiritika" saga (three films between 1986 and 1995, of which the first two were directed by the legendary Kevin S. Tenney) and the charming "Long Time Dead". Given these premises, it is not surprising that even in this situation of worrying stagnation for horror cinema, the Ouija board is used again to unleash hell, and the one who does it is Stiles White, a visual effects specialist in his first directorial role, who crafts this teen horror with the explanatory title "Ouija" under the productive aegis of Jason Blum and Michael Bay. It is no coincidence that the director of "Transformers" is involved in the operation, given the alliance that his Platinum Dunes has with Hasbro, but this time we are definitely in different territories compared to the films he has accustomed us to as a director. The problem is that "Ouija" is a terribly outdated and wrong film in every component. Far from the sagacious low-budget but high-chills optics characteristic of BlumHouse films, "Ouija" is a tired rehashing of situations and events that the horror film viewer knows by heart, without ever trying to scare. It is evident that Stiles White, who also writes the screenplay, aims at a teenage audience that does not have a historical memory of the genre and that needs a contemporary reference point to become attached to horror, but building "Ouija" as we have seen it could even be counterproductive in the attempt to affiliate with horror cinema. Proud representative of PG-13 horror —that is, suitable even for kids—, "Ouija" never aims for violence, stages moments of suspense that are really watered down, and even the scenes of revulsion with more or less monstrous ghosts are very, but really very, soft. The story of the group of teenagers who use the Ouija board to communicate with their deceased peer, only to discover that they have awakened a malevolent force, reminds one of many other films seen, starting with the fundamental "Spiritika" and "Long Time Dead". Here, the device is used without imagination and without adding elements that can make this "Ouija" memorable over time, instead tending to pad the film with things borrowed from the recent tradition of the ghost movie à la James Wan and, above all, with entire solutions that strongly recall Asian cinema from about fifteen years ago, with a citation (unintended?) to "The Call" and a monster that looks far too much like Samara from the American "The Ring" (although some mischievous person might think of its parody in "Scary Movie", given the quality of the makeup). And so, we proceed wearily towards a telegraphed ending that unnecessarily leaves doors open to a sequel that we hope does not arrive. Perhaps it will appeal to those born in 2001, but if you have even a minimal familiarity with the genre, "Ouija" causes many more yawns than scares!