Ouija

Imagine yourself lying in bed, staring at the alarm clock. Right now it says 7.59am. You know that any second now, it’s going to switch to 8.00am, and the alarm is going to go off. When it does that, do you jump in fright? If you answered "Yes", then congratulations, you’re really REALLY going to enjoy all of the frights to be found within Ouija. If you answered "No, of course not, what kind of stupid question is that?", then congratulations, you’re a relatively normal person, and will be completely unimpressed by the total lack of originality and completely sign-posted scares to be found within this watered down horror movie.

Starting off with a protracted and pointless opening scene with two best friends using a Ouija board and spelling out the rules – never play alone, never play it in a graveyard, always say goodbye – we then jump forward to one of the girls playing alone, and subsequently committing suicide. The rest of the film plays like a Debbie Downer episode of The O.C., all pretty young cast members expertly shot and lit, as they use the Ouija board to contact their now dead friend, but instead they come into contact with something ... else.

That something else proves to be a ghost who’s seen pretty much every horror movie from the last twenty years – especially The Ring, holy cow does the ghost LOVE The Ring! A cursed item that kills anyone who plays it, with a long haired female baddie offing them one at a time, making it look kinda suicide-y... the music of this film is even a blatant rip-off of that superior, haunted video tape frightfest.

Lead actress Olivia Cooke does okay with her by-the-numbers scream queen, and despite yourself you’ll probably still jump and shout at some of the better orchestrated shocks, but this is still horror at its most anaemic; suffering from a total scare deficiency, Ouija is too safe and shiny to be anything but bland and forgettable . Between this and Battleship, maybe the whole boardgames-as-movies idea just needs to be forgotten about for a while.