First of all, let me state that I do not consider myself a hardcore horror connaisseur, but I do like to think that I can spot a pile of sh*te when I see one. And boy is this movie a massive sh*tepile!
Also, I don't ever do reviews. But I feel like have to step in here.
I saw HUSH, it was okay... I saw OCULUS, it was bad... But this one... man oh man... The real horror about this movie is that it manages to score 6.2 on here and even get some good reviews.
It is obvious that Mike Flanagan has seen all the James Wan horror flicks. It is also obvious that Mr. Flanagan does not understand what makes these movies good.
To make things easy, let's start with the good: - The oldest daughter (Annalise Basso) was pretty convincing (up until the end) - Her boyfriend (Parker Mack) looked like a young Patrick Wilson and wasn't horrible nor important. - ... Nope, that's about it.
Other characters: - The mom was bland and boring. Also, more than once the camera stayed on her for too long for her to stay in character - The priest was okay but unnecessary - The youngest daughter wasn't good, but hey, she's young. Even worse was her CGI mouth, though. Flanagan must've thought this looked amazing because we only saw like seven random jump scares with the girl's CGI mouth open wide... - Ghost daddy... why?? what?!
The writing is horrible as there are far too many dialogues in which the characters lay out their entire backstory in the most uninteresting way e.g. we don't need to know that the girls' grandmother was a fortune teller.
The pacing was incredibly slow. There's one scene in which the girls are alone in the house, which could have been a tense sequence. Instead we see some teenage couple shenanigans and a really tiresome dinner date of two widowed adults. The only purpose being that we know the priest lost his wife and we can move on to the seance scene...
Almost every moment of this movie felt like I'd seen it somewhere before only slightly/a lot better: - The 60s feel from "The Conjuring" - The medium hoax setup - The black monsters from "Insidious" - The gaping CGI mouth from 100 movies - The pupil-less eyeballs - The slingshot scene - The lips sewn together - The jump scare cliffhanger before the credits - The girl saying "it seems really dumb to split up" - The fact that they do split up even after the girl said the previous... Almost all of it is a badly rip off from another (or 10 different) movie(s).
ALMOST! The one thing that was a first for me was the "plot". If I understand correctly, the family is being terrorized and eventually killed off by an angry mob of Polish Jew ghosts? The priest explains that the ghost possessing the little girl was (a) rescued from a concentration camp by allied soldiers (b) brought back to America only to (c) be kidnapped buy some crazy Nazi doctor who experiments on Jews in a basement in an American suburb... These experiments primarily being your typical torture stuff(?) like sewing mouths shut, cutting vocal cords, cutting in general...
Oh and then the priest drops something along the lines of "but there was something else in the darkness, something that had never been human to begin with"... So demons? Do you mean demons, priests? Can you tell us more about those inhuman fiends please?! No? Oh... you want to keep the focus on the Polish Jew ghosts? Oh, OK... So don't torture Jews or they will possess innocent kids and slaughter families? That's not a weird moral at all...
So... don't spend money on this. Please don't. I haven't seen the other Ouija movies... but if this is the best one as stated by a reviewer before me, I will stay as far away from them as possible.
Also, I don't ever do reviews. But I feel like have to step in here.
I saw HUSH, it was okay... I saw OCULUS, it was bad... But this one... man oh man... The real horror about this movie is that it manages to score 6.2 on here and even get some good reviews.
It is obvious that Mike Flanagan has seen all the James Wan horror flicks. It is also obvious that Mr. Flanagan does not understand what makes these movies good.
To make things easy, let's start with the good: - The oldest daughter (Annalise Basso) was pretty convincing (up until the end) - Her boyfriend (Parker Mack) looked like a young Patrick Wilson and wasn't horrible nor important. - ... Nope, that's about it.
Other characters: - The mom was bland and boring. Also, more than once the camera stayed on her for too long for her to stay in character - The priest was okay but unnecessary - The youngest daughter wasn't good, but hey, she's young. Even worse was her CGI mouth, though. Flanagan must've thought this looked amazing because we only saw like seven random jump scares with the girl's CGI mouth open wide... - Ghost daddy... why?? what?!
The writing is horrible as there are far too many dialogues in which the characters lay out their entire backstory in the most uninteresting way e.g. we don't need to know that the girls' grandmother was a fortune teller.
The pacing was incredibly slow. There's one scene in which the girls are alone in the house, which could have been a tense sequence. Instead we see some teenage couple shenanigans and a really tiresome dinner date of two widowed adults. The only purpose being that we know the priest lost his wife and we can move on to the seance scene...
Almost every moment of this movie felt like I'd seen it somewhere before only slightly/a lot better: - The 60s feel from "The Conjuring" - The medium hoax setup - The black monsters from "Insidious" - The gaping CGI mouth from 100 movies - The pupil-less eyeballs - The slingshot scene - The lips sewn together - The jump scare cliffhanger before the credits - The girl saying "it seems really dumb to split up" - The fact that they do split up even after the girl said the previous... Almost all of it is a badly rip off from another (or 10 different) movie(s).
ALMOST! The one thing that was a first for me was the "plot". If I understand correctly, the family is being terrorized and eventually killed off by an angry mob of Polish Jew ghosts? The priest explains that the ghost possessing the little girl was (a) rescued from a concentration camp by allied soldiers (b) brought back to America only to (c) be kidnapped buy some crazy Nazi doctor who experiments on Jews in a basement in an American suburb... These experiments primarily being your typical torture stuff(?) like sewing mouths shut, cutting vocal cords, cutting in general...
Oh and then the priest drops something along the lines of "but there was something else in the darkness, something that had never been human to begin with"... So demons? Do you mean demons, priests? Can you tell us more about those inhuman fiends please?! No? Oh... you want to keep the focus on the Polish Jew ghosts? Oh, OK... So don't torture Jews or they will possess innocent kids and slaughter families? That's not a weird moral at all...
So... don't spend money on this. Please don't. I haven't seen the other Ouija movies... but if this is the best one as stated by a reviewer before me, I will stay as far away from them as possible.