MY CALL: This movie is refreshingly well made for its era and budget. A lot is done with a little when everyone involved cares about the product. Sure, you’ll wish for more graphic horror. But you shouldn’t be disappointed if you love the 80s. MORE MOVIES LIKE Witchboard: For more quality “Ouija horror”, I’d skip Ouija (2014) altogether and go right to Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016).
At a party, Linda (Tawny Kitaen; from those White Snake music videos) and her law school classmate Brandon (Stephen Nichols; House) call to the spirit of a deceased young boy. After the party, Brandon leaves his Ouija board and Linda uses it to call the boy’s spirit again. But she forgets how Brandon taught her to be sure the spirit was not an imposter! Apparently, this is a typical spirit-calling problem.
The spirit connects personally with Linda, her boyfriend Jim’s (Todd Allen) buddy is killed in a freak accident at a construction site, and now it seems the ghost wants Jim out of the picture. The spirit wants to become Linda’s unborn child!
The spirit becomes fixated on Linda and warns her with kitchen knives and tomato sauce of the consequences of abandoning him (i.e., returning the Ouija board). As Linda becomes more obsessed with the board and exhibits increased paranoia, Brandon warns that the spirit must be exorcised. So, Jim and Brandon bring a kooky psychic medium (Kathleen Wilhoite; Fire in the Sky, Angel Heart, Dream Demon) to the house to perform a séance. Ultimately, the spirit is an imposter, a powerful evil mass murderer who was hunted down and slain in the very house where Linda and Jim live.
A scalding-hot shower scene, a possession, a throwdown between the spirit (in Linda’s body and a dapper suit) and Jim, an expository monologue explaining everything, and a bunch of bullet holes in a Ouija board all force our way through a hasty final act.
The death scenes are okay. Not great, not bad. But what makes this movie work is actually the story and the characters. I was really engaged despite the mediocre deaths. And other than some blood, the gore is minimal. Still, I really dig this movie. I didn’t when I was younger. But older, more seasoned me appreciates this film for the care of its filmmakers. Writer and director Kevin Tenney (Night of the Demons, The Cellar) knows what he’s doing, and so did his cast and crew. As such, I’m issuing a strong recommendation for fans of 80s horror and “Ouija horror.”
