Ouija Board | The Fright Owl

Last week, my husband stumbled upon a movie cash code that I thought was lost forever, and when I redeemed it online, I learned that it expired at the end of the month. That didn’t give me much time, and since it’s so close to Halloween, I couldn’t NOT go to a horror movie. That would have been stupid.

My choices were limited as Boo! A Madea Halloween and Ouija: Origin of Evil are the only horror movies in theaters right now (side note: What the hell is up with that?). I gravitate toward scarier, of course, so Ouija it was.

I have to say that the movie very much exceeded my expectations. I enjoyed the first one to an extent because I will pretty much like any horror movie I watch, but it wasn’t the greatest. Just your average teen ghost/supernatural thriller. It had a few scares, but overall it wasn’t anything to freak out about. This one was a different story. It had a creepy plot and didn’t rely solely on jump scares to frighten the audience.

Warning: Here Be Spoilers

I’m not going to go into too much detail here. The actresses and actors involved did a wonderful job, but the standout performance of the movie was Lulu Wilson, who starred as Doris. If you remember the first movie, that is the ghost’s name from the original. Doris, like many creepy kids in horror movies, started off cute and just went downhill really quickly after messing with a – dun dun DUN! – Ouija board. If you weren’t already aware, that was a mistake.

I guess I just didn’t file the original in my brain for very long because I didn’t get until almost the end that these characters were actually connected to the original movie. I felt pretty stupid, but it also made me enjoy the movie a lot more since I had one of those “Oooohhhh” moments as the movie was reaching its height,

I am completely fine with horror movies that don’t have a very happy ending, so the ending of this movie was – I felt – very appropriate and enjoyable. My mom disagrees, but I think it takes something away from the creepiness of a film to have everything work out just right. Since I finally realized near the end that these were the same characters, I figured out where it was heading, and I thought they did a great job of playing it out.

I also want to point out the nod to The Exorcist when the priest, played by Henry Thomas, stops outside the Zander home with his bag of religious goodies. I love shit like that.

My recommendation is that you go watch this one in theaters to celebrate the holiday. I’m a fan, and it even made me want to watch the first movie again.

I remember watching Candyman at a sleepover I hosted when I was little. My friends and I decided to test the movie’s premise by speaking the name ‘Candyman’ 5 times in the mirror in the bathroom. (Spoiler Alert: He didn’t show.)

My aunt came over when we were in the middle of it, and being an inquisitive individual, she asked, “What the hell are you doing?! What were you going to do if he showed up? Die?”

I guess we hadn’t thought that far ahead.

But being idgit kids, we played these games over and over and over. And being an idgit adult, I decided to play a few tonight, just for the sense of nostalgia. Here are my favorite deadly games from yesteryear:

Bloody Mary

Not this.

I really don’t think I need to explain this one, but just in case you’re a mole person that just escaped your hatch, you basically speak the name “Bloody Mary” three times in front of a bathroom mirror in the dark and she appears to kill you, or hurt you, or read you a scary story or something.

So I went to my bathroom, turned the lights off, and said the magic words. She was a no-show. But then I decided to pee while I was in there and found out I had started my period. Success?

Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board

This one probably needs very little explanation. A group of kids surround a kid who is lying on the floor. Each kid puts two fingers under the lucky kid on the floor and chants “light as a feather, stiff as a board” repeatedly until the kid magically floats off the floor. Just good old-fashioned witchcraft at its finest, folks.

Well, as you can tell from the description above, you need more than a few people to do this one, but I improvised by getting my husband and dog involved. Since my dog doesn’t have fingers, she got to be the lucky one on the floor.

And she was not having it.

We attempted to do the chanting and the lifting, but she just wiggled around until we gave up. I mean, we were able to lift her, but it wasn’t really in the spirit of the game.

Concentrate

We’d do this one while waiting in lines in elementary school. Two people play. One pounds lightly on the other’s back while chanting “Concentrate. Concentrate. Concentrate on what I’m saying. People are dying. Children are crying. Concentrate. Concentrate.” Not awkward at all.

Anyway, creepy verses follow that have corresponding hand movements for effect. You can check out this link for the full thing. Afterward, the kid not chanting is supposed to open her eyes and find out how she’s going to die according to whatever colored door she sees. Makes sense, right?

My husband took a bit of convincing because, for some reason, he didn’t want to know how he was going to die. Go figure. He didn’t really have to worry about anything. I couldn’t get through it. It’s actually really weird to chant something to someone’s back, even if that person is your spouse.

Ouija Board

Um…no. Not touching this one. The closest I’m getting to these is this tin of mints I bought at Spirit Halloween last year.

If you want to play around with this one again, be my guest. But fair warning:

Do you want demons? ‘Cause that’s how you get demons.

Well, it was fun walking down memory lane, but it really made me realize how little boundaries children have…and how dumb they can be. Like, what were we going to do with Candyman if he showed up?

The Fright Owl

Tag Archives: Ouija Board

Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016)

Throwback: Bloody Mary and Other Deadly Games

For those who prefer a little fright in their day