OUIJA: ORIGIN OF EVIL - Most Improved

Director: Mike Flanagan
Writers: Mike Flanagan, Jeff Howard
Cast: Annalise Basso, Elizabeth Reaser, Lulu Wilson, Henry Thomas, Parker Mack
Runtime: 99 mins.
2016

Movie sequels have problems. Books and video games can often equal or even improve upon their predecessors, but a follow-up to a film typically signals a death knell. I suspect it has something to do with the purity and rigorous structure of cinematic storytelling, though there is a precedent for films that improve upon the formula offered by their franchise starter. Movies like The Dark Knight, The Godfather Part II, or even Final Destination 2 started with something special, and made it better.

I've been racking my brain; I cannot think of a single instance of an awful movie that made a great sequel. That's why, as far as I'm concerned, Ouija: Origin of Evil is an unprecedented historical event.

I've found a graphic that maps sequel quality as against the quality of the original, measured by Rotten Tomato scores. It's a flawed metric, but as good as any for making some sort of objective data set. Here's the chart. I've marked in red where Ouija: Origin of Evil would land if included.

Here's a link to the chart if you want the bigger version. That's a Rotten Tomatoes net improvement of 75%. The only movie that even comes close is The Wrath of Khan, and that differential is 42%.


Let's investigate what in the name of James Whale made this follow-up so inexplicably impressive. For it is impressive; it's important to remember that Rotten Tomato scores are a shoddy bellwether of quality, but they do mean something. Ouija: Origin of Evil, or its spooky acronym OOoE, is a well-constructed possession/haunted house film with a reasonable number of cliches that are more than balanced by its clear-eyed freshness.

That clarity of purpose is perhaps the film's defining characteristic. With sub-par horror, everything feels muddled. The things that unfold onscreen don't appear to have any tangible relation to anything we understand as reality. Characters' motivations are nonexistent, behavior is erratic, plot edifices are baffling, causality is unmoored. They feel like one of those on rails shooters or amusement park rides, a world where there is no purpose, but you must continue down your preordained path for no other reason than that you're here and might as well. The first Ouija fits this model, with its anonymous teenagers making arbitrary spirit enemies, and then being shocked when this goes poorly for them. OOoE is careful not to emulate its predecessor in any way beyond the physical presence of the titular board.

The most prominent distinguisher between the two films is the change in setting. OOoE is, as its title suggests, a prequel to the first film, set in 1967 Los Angeles as the Ouija craze is sweeping the nation. Or at least, the game's taboo popularity is sufficient to bring it to the attention of Alice Zander (Elizabeth Reaser), a widowed mother of two girls who makes her living as a fraud medium. Recognizing the game as the kind of easily exploitable trash that might ultimately spawn a forgettable cash grab movie in the far distant year of 2014, she brings it into her home and incorporates it into her spiel. Meanwhile, older daughter Lina (Annalise Basso) finds herself at the cusp of a sexual awakening that is blockaded by her overprotective mother--she did lose her husband not long ago, after all. Lina strains at the yoke of her family structure, and begins to have doubts about the ethics of her mother's job. This added perspective gives her a more clearheaded perception of the events surrounding younger daughter Doris (Lulu Wilson), who is adept at operating the Ouija board in a way that can only be described as supernatural. Alice is happy to use her daughter's talents as a source of income that will keep them from being evicted, but Lina can't help but notice disturbing changes in her sister's behavior.

Prequels are typically even louder death knells than sequels, but writers Mike Flanagan and Jeff Howard have done the unthinkable and raised this franchise from the dead. The time skip back to 1967 immediately injects a sense of vibrancy to the premise. Following a single mother and her two daughters through their day to day lives is already far more novel than most horror movies allow, and the period setting only makes it feel fresher. Not to mention that Flanagan and Howard are actually capable of constructing engaging and sympathetic characters. About a half hour into this film, before anything vaguely supernatural occurs, I realized that I would be happy to continue watching these characters for another hour even if this were a domestic genre. Refreshing in a genre that happily pumps out cookie cutter characters solely for the sake of getting churned up.

The youngest daughter doesn't have much dimensionality beyond being convincingly disturbing, but Alice and Lina both have solid arcs. Alice's relief at the bankability of her daughter's relationship with the Ouija board is so palpable that it's easy to empathize with some of her more irresponsible decisions, a dynamic that makes Lina's savvy attentiveness all the more welcome. There are squiffy moments of plotty nonsense here and there, but for the most part the premise is airtight. Lina is a surprisingly fascinating protagonist; she has a young love scene about halfway through the film that is rife with cliche, but totally works under Flanagan's surehanded direction. Rather than feeling silly, it feels of a piece with the setting, as if we wandered into a classic coming of age film for a few moments. Even Father Tom Hogan (Henry Thomas)--principle of the kids' school, Catholic priest, and flirtation partner for Alice--totally works. He is given the unenviable task of providing the final act information dump, but both his relationship with the rest of the characters and the context for his knowledge have been roundly established by this point, so the exposition goes down smooth.

So much of this works thanks to Flanagan's knack for cinematic language. His previous movies, Oculus and Hush (another 2016 release), make for a trifecta of horror films with unique and fully realized tones. As writer, director, and editor, he keeps an auteurlike control over the creative process, Every camera movement in OOoE is motivated, every shot tells a story. One of Flanagan's visual motifs for this film involves playing around with foreground and background. There are a number of beautifully constructed shots in which we are experiencing something with a character in the foreground, while something else entirely is happening out of focus behind them. Though not always used as a scare tactic, the technique heightens our paranoia, and establishes the atmosphere of a household in which there are things happening just beyond the scope of our awareness.

Of all Flanagan's impressive tricks, the most surprising issues from the screenplay. Not only does he transform a wretched cash grab franchise into something respectable, but he even refurbishes the slapdash nonsense mythology of the original Ouija. Part of my complaint about that film was its propensity for chucking disparate scary elements into the story for no discernible narrative purpose beyond freakiness. Against all odds, OOoE takes that movie's messy signifiers and weaves them together into something entirely sensible. The film provides narrative and character-based reasons for all of the previous film's dumb imagery, and grounds it in a meaningful way that eludes even high quality prequels. The work that OOoE does with the same subject matter is borderline symphonic compared to the wet fart brigade of Ouija.

That being said, you would not be aided in any way by watching the first movie before this one. OOoE, in addition to all the work it does to redeem its source material, also works perfectly well as a standalone piece. Despite the heavy corporate shackles of a title that both connects it to that 2014 trash movie, and proclaims it as the origin for an ongoing saga, Flanagan's film is a standalone testament to the power of creators who have real stories to tell even in a sea of bankrupt intellectual property. If his early career is any indicator, Flanagan will be one of the most exciting voices in mainstream horror moving forward.

3.5 / 5  BLOBS