Review: Ouija

Ouija
Cert: 15 / 89 mins / Dir. Stiles White




The trick with supernatural horror as a genre is making your audience believe in the threat, at least for the duration of the film. If they go into the theatre already convinced that the angry spirits of the netherworld are waiting to pounce upon the living via wooden SMS messaging, then that's fine. If hardline skeptics emerge blinking into the foyer afterwards, shrugging off an hour and a half of solid scares, that's also fine. But if you make no attempt to convince the doubters, even through characters in your film, then it's going to be an eye-rolling ride. There are no cynical characters in Ouija, just a bunch of teenagers who appear to be auditioning for Final Destination 6.

Ouija is a film for the emotionally vulnerable people who, in the wake of the unexplained death of a close friend, think that the best way of dealing with that grief and confusion is by waving a flag into the spirit world and seeing who's up for a chat. Ouija is a film for people who, when reacting to an unknown intruder on the other side of a door, hide in the closet. Ouija is a film for people who have a stern old Puerto Rican housemaid who appears only three times; once to establish her character, once to tut and frown at the ouija-board, and finally to tell them how to destroy it*¹. Ouija is a film for anyone born in the last twenty years who absent-mindedly toys with a plastic penguin on a ball-chain not realising that it's a novelty USB-drive, despite it looking exactly like a novelty USB-drive. Ouija is a film for people whose unlit house at midnight is perfectly navigable, but who need an actual torch to see in a short underpass with daylight streaming in from both ends. Ouija is a film for any teenager in this actual day and age who'd approach their grieving friend holding a spirit-board and ask, without an iota of irony, "…what's that?"

Ouija is a film which realises it's been staggeringly lacklustre in its build up, so for its third-act revelation not only employs an attic and a basement, but also some old black-and-white photographs, a creepy child's doll and wheels out (literally) Insidious's Lin Shaye to explain the last sixty minutes and set up the next twenty five.

Ouija is a film for the chronically lazy.

Not as outright hateful as some of this year's horror flicks, the film is at least reasonably effective in what it does; the problem is that What It Does is lazily rehash every mid-budget horror made in the last 30 years. If this had been released straight to video in 1985 then it might have been good enough to make the grade.
But, y'know. It wasn't.
And, y'know. It isn't.

"And don't forget kids: messing around with makeshift spirit-boards invariably has bad consequences for the psychologically vulnerable, as this film goes to show!

That's why you should always use an official Hasbro Ouija™ Board instead.*²"

Whatever.



There are a few nice shots in the film's climactic scenes, but that's pretty much it.



Oh Michael Bay's one of the film's producers, so it probably does, yes.



If anything, this is a DVD for a bunch of teenage girls to watch and shriek over.



I just might.



I just won't.



There just isn't.

How come when doe-eyed Laine is creeping around a dark attic with the torch/flash on her smartphone it illuminates a radius of approximately two feet, but when some fuckwit four rows in front of me checks their texts during the movie, the light from the screen alone makes the auditorium wallpaper visible?

*¹ "The connection's too strong, you won't be able to break it by destroying the board! Oh, but also, you've got to destroy the board."

*² Nope. Not even fucking kidding. There's a plug for it in the film's end-credits. They've actually managed to top Battleship. Next stop, Hangman, I shouldn't wonder…

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Percy Jackson - Sea of Monsters

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (2D)
Cert: PG / 106 mins / Dir. Thor Freudenthal



I took a gamble on this, as I really couldn't get on with the first movie, but it seemed to pay off because I quite enjoyed Sea of Monsters. I'll admit that there were several points where I had to remind myself I was watching a kids film*¹, but once I got into the mindset I found surprisingly engaging.

The key ingredient is a cast who are fully committed to the roles they're playing*², taking them seriously enough to sell the show, but not forgetting to have fun at the same time. Sure, there are a host of apparent homages and references to other movies, but they're knitted together so deftly that you can't help but be impressed that they're actually working. What also helps is that the story is grounded in Greek mythology; often used creatively enough that I can envision it capturing the imagination of the younger audience members and firing their interest in history. Weaving facts (however fanciful) into an adventure story is incredibly easy to get patronisingly wrong, and these movies should do for many kids what Clash of the Titans did for me when I was a nipper.

Elsewhere, the score is nicely implemented and the visual effects look mostly great, but some of the scenes are so dark that I was struggling to make out what was going on. And these are daytime shots, with me watching in a darkened auditorium, and without the darkening effect of 3D. It's not a constant thing, but just enough to be disconcerting when it happens.

Sea of Monsters is undoubtedly a one for the youngsters, but there movies currently on release with far less conviction than this. You could do a lot worse.

If nothing else, you have to admire the nerve of a film that replicates the opening of the Ark of the Covenant in an abandoned fairground, and all with a straight face. Hell, yeah.

Yeah.



Not so much of the laughing, but I dug the rest.



Yes.



It's an entertaining enough afternoon out, and some of the scenes are so dark you'll benefit from being in a cinema.



No.



At some point.



No. Seriously, the film is crying out for one.

Question here

*¹ That's not to do any disservice to cinema for youngsters, but quite often there are concessions which have to be made. A lot of the humour in PJ:SoM falls under that category.
*² With the exception of Jake Abel who's just sleepwalking through this, not even revelling in his own typecasting.

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.