The world’s most polarizing board game receives a sequel to the 2014 box office bomb, in “Ouija: Origin of Evil”. The movie takes place in 1967 Los Angeles, almost fifty years prior to the events in the first film, with a widowed mother, Alice Zander (Elizabeth Reaser) and her two daughters Paulina (Annalise Basso) and Dorris (Lulu Wilson) adding a new stunt to bolster their seance scam business. After they unwittingly invite authentic evil into their home, Dorris is overtaken by a merciless spirit who brings out the worst in an evil side to the little girl. The family confronts their unthinkable fears to save her and send her possessor back to the other side before it takes Dorris in tow for good. “Ouija: Origin of Evil” is written and directed by Mike Flannagan, and is rated PG-13 for for disturbing imagery, terror, violence and thematic elements.

Mike Flannagan’s first of many wise decisions that he made for this film was to distance it as far away as possible from the 2014 original that made my bottom ten list for that year. By making “Origin of Evil” a prequel movie set in 1967 Los Angeles, it allowed this series a fresh start to find its own voice in horror again. While I feel this movie is being overrated slightly, I can say that this sequel is a hundred times better than the first offering, as Flannagan hits another home run with PG-13 horror. Considering how hard of a task it is to create solid suspense and genuine terror in 2016 without so much as one drop of blood or brutal violence, “Ouija: Origin of Evil” crafts a blueprint of suspense during a year when surprisingly horror movies are on the up. At 94 minutes, this movie is soundly paced, creatively styled, and superbly acted considering it’s a child dominated film. With the exception of some familiar tropes, this shriekfest offered a surprising chill just in time for the Halloween season, when there is a noticeable absence of genre related films for the respective holiday.

With this movie being in the 60’s, Flannagan takes us back to the days when Hammer Films were the leading voice in horror movie entertainment by allowing us through a time portal back to the days when films were considerably easier to make. Immediately right off the bat I noticed some touches in presentation that intrigued the horror buff inside of me. The title screen introduces us to the story in big bold letters without so much as one of the actors names being mentioned. Hitchcock always believed that this was important to relate the very surrealism of stepping into such a forbidden world. After that, I thoroughly enjoyed the little quirks and quips of cigarette burn film backgrounds, as well as spotty editing, which more than pays tribute to the timeframe it’s spoofing. What felt slightly distracting about this presentation however, was how polished everything looked visually within the sets and actor wardrobes within this world. Flannagan brushes our memories with nostalgia, but fails to go all the way, resulting in my transformation only being about halfway. It’s not a major problem however, as the very lighting and use of camera angles really spiced up the usual cat and mouse game of possession movies.

Flannagan is a magician behind the camera, instilling several frame-in-frame shots with two different characters being presented far apart from one another. Typically, our antagonist is shown in the foreground, with our protagonists talking and discussing her actions in the background. What this does is allow a different take on the audience seeing what’s brewing in the distance long before her family does. We see this usually when characters pop up out of nowhere, but the slow, patient build of this little girl’s transformation into the darkness that guides her, really is communicated brilliantly with Mike’s soft distinction. For a horror movie, there is some really solid framing going on here that works its magic telling more than one story at a time. With a screenplay this condemned, there’s not a lot of room for dead weight, therefore we are learning two arcs at the same time because of such above grade photography; the Mother’s challenge in knowing what’s going on, and Dorris’s descent further into the clutches of this sinister force. It all makes for chilling, blood-less material that never tires itself out.

I was happy to see Annalise Basso back with Flannagan after their triumph in “Oculus”. Here, she registers once again a roller-coaster of emotional depth that really makes the hairs on your arm stand up. Considering Basso is arguably third rank in this story, she really makes the most of every scene given, presenting the blurred line between normal and surreal within this board game. Elizabeth Reaser is also great as a grieving widow who turns cash by day fooling the community into thinking there’s someone trying to communicate with them from the other side. There’s something truly ironic to the fact that halfway through this movie Reaser’s character finds herself on the other end of the table, reaching out for any kind of guidance from a familiar loss herself. It was refreshing to see a strong female character like Reaser’s who could easily drop all sanity at any second with the revolving door of negativity that keeps popping up, but her Alice is one of great restraint and psychological stability that really played against type for these kind of movies. Leaps and bounds above the rest however, was the work of 11-year-old Lulu Wilson as Dorris. This is a performance to truly marvel at, as Wilson never overplays her possession or forces the cheesy dialogue out of her mouth to something that it’s not. A child actor more times than not fails at this particular side of things, but Lulu plays everything straight, without ever making a cartoon out of her character. The scariest part of what she’s saying is there’s such promise and truth to what disgusting things are being uttered by this little girl, and her blank stare into the screen sent shivers down a certain film critic’s body. YIPES!!!!

One big problem that I did have with the movie is that we’re still depending a little too heavily on jump scares to substantiate legitimate terror. For a majority of this movie, we’re getting slow-building psychological terror that is carefully executed to keep building. The problem happens about midway through the movie when that logic is thrown out the window for no fewer than seven jump scares in this movie. The positive to this is they are mostly reasonable with the way they are executed, but this style of scares always feels too cheap and easy to me, and the movie would’ve been even better with a couple of these devices. It casts a blemish on an otherwise solidly depicted picture.

Mike Flannagan does the impossible in creating yet another PG-13 horror accomplishment by bringing us back to the basics. Strong expositional backstories and slow-building suspense take this series where it hasn’t gone before, and breathes life back into a game that we’ve touched several times, but never felt that touch in intimacy right back. With the exception of its dependency on jump scares, this one is a strong recommend to bring hoards of moviegoers back to the multiplex this Halloween.

7/10