Oui­ja

When boardgames go bad… Yes, death lurks in the dusty cor­ner of your cupboard/​wardrobe/​home stor­age solu­tion as direc­tor Stiles White (sic) reveals that even care­free mon­keyshines with friends have their mor­tal down­side. It’s a film about that pre-teen right of pas­sage: play­ing with a nov­el­ty plas­tic Oui­ja board on your Rain­bow Bright duvet cov­er and acci­den­tal­ly invok­ing the dor­mant spir­its of Hell.

Flash for­ward a few years and lis­som, care­free Deb­bie (Shel­ley Hen­nig) decides to hang her­self using some Christ­mas lights just min­utes after con­vers­ing, like, total­ly nor­mal­ly with BFF Laine (Olivia Cooke), polite­ly excus­ing her­self from a night out at the local dis­cothèque to stay home and eat pas­ta. The funer­al rolls on like this was all some teenage inevitabil­i­ty, and no fun­ny busi­ness is con­sid­ered even though she showed zero signs of psy­cho­log­i­cal dam­age. The olds just want to jet off on a sun hol­i­day, best to for­get their stiff-in-a-box off­spring and move on. The law, too, would ​“nev­er under­stand”. What else would any sane per­son do in this sit­u­a­tion but gath­er up a dis­tressed old Oui­ja board and get your pals out for a quick sesh?

To say this sto­ry is on auto-pilot would be sul­ly­ing the good name of hon­est, reli­able auto-pilots across the globe. This film makes auto-pilots look like Andy Kauf­man in his pomp. Rolling on from one rote set up to the next, off­ing the human flesh­pods in a series of blood­less, unimag­i­na­tive and bour­geois ways (death by swim­ming pool cov­er!!) and with a twist so glar­ing­ly obvi­ous it may as well be sig­nalled with the cer­e­mo­ni­al fir­ing an anti-tank gun at three sec­ond inter­vals while a plane sky-writes the words, ​“Did any­one order a plot twist?”

Add to that some bar­gain-base­ment hor­ror SFX and lots of Loud Things Hap­pen­ing, and well there you have it. Low-point: the kids enter an emp­ty house and turn the lights on to find — boo! — their pal has just been stand­ing there in the pitch dark­ness. ​“Hey, I always come in through the back door!” he assures. And scene.