Ouija Bored

I was in the mood for a shitty movie.
I have never denied my masochistic tendencies.

Originally, I had planned on watching and reviewing the recent remake of The Mummy, starring Tom Cruise, Tom Cruise's weird smashed-pancake face and that one weird extra tooth in the exact center of his creepy, picket-fence grin. I'm assuming that my sudden surge of self-hatred stems from the fact that I have two days off from work and the sudden surcease of verbal and psychological abuse normally force fed to me by the general public left a large vacuum. And we all know what nature abhors. I mean, besides Tom Cruise.

Anyway, I got about 40 minutes in and realized I was wasting my time. #1 - I couldn't look at the screen anytime Cruise was on it, because he literally makes my intestines recoil like greasy snakes. #2 - I never thought I'd say this but Tom Cruise is no Brendan Frasier, and #3 - There's no Ardeth Bay, or even a reasonable fascimile thereof, anywhere to be seen in this limp ripoff to make any of this even remotely worthwhile. And shut up about Boris Karloff already. That was a stand-alone Creature Feature. Brendan Frasier's Mummy was less a remake of the original Mummy than an Egyptian homage to Army of Darkness. Tom Cruise's Mummy is just a pathetic attempt on Cruise's part to shave twenty years off of his career and milk the cash cow a little more before the teat runs dry.

So I went with Ouija: Origin Of Evil instead. Because it was there, Tom Cruise isn't in it and it looked just James Wanny enough to slam headfirst into the celluloid toilet. Except it turns out to be directed by Mike Flanagan, who directed Absentia, which I really liked, and both Oculus and Hush, which I really didn't. So maybe this fourth venture will tip the scales even.

And Flanagan, I'm telling you right now, if you fuck up Gerald's Game, I will...probably say some really not nice things about you. Yeah.

Alright, so...nice Kodachrome color scheme so far. Los Angeles, 1967. Young widowed mom who kind of looks like a lazy drag queen is trying to raise her two daughters (slutty teen, innocent under 10) by scamming gullible victims in a fortune telling shakedown, i.e. teen daughter stands behind curtains and pretends to be a ghost, younger daughter blows out candles, mom collects five dollars a reading, everyone is happy. But the show is getting a little stale so teen daughter suggests adding a Ouija Board to the act.

Oh fuck me, is the priest really Henry Thomas? Oh god, mom from Twilight is dating Ell-ee-OTT. Oh gross, this is so wrong.

Haunter

For some reason, this film reminds me of the criminally underrated 2013 ghost flick Haunter, starring a post-Little Miss Sunshine/pre Scream Queens Abigail Breslin and the eternally sexy no matter how old he gets Stephen McHattie. Sigh. What I wouldn't do for a big shadowy hunk of sexually threatening McHattie right about now, cuz Henry Thomas is about as sexy as a dog's rubber squeaky toy. This flick got no game. But it does have a nice, hazy, saturated decades-gone-by past-vibe going for it.

Oh yay, Doug Jones is in this! And he's cast in the role of...oil slick? *shrug* k, whatever.

So, little sister starts farting around with the Ouija Board and gets her innocent little ass possessed by the aforementioned oil slick, a greasy, tarry Slenderman with red demon eyes and a vocabulary that consists of the words "OURRA RAAHHH GLOOOBLE WORRRR!" Oooooh, scary.

"OOOOOOOOOO-klahoma..."

Unfortunately, oil slick Slenderman disappears inside of kid sister's body and thereafter manifests as her rolled back white eyeballs and a stretched open mouth. Not as scary. About as unnerving as a Hoover upright.

Yeah, brilliant. You're pretty sure your kid sister is possessed and that the spirit can hear everything you're saying because it's attached to the property you live in, so hey Mom and new Priest boyfriend, lets go up to my room and very obviously leave creepy kid sister behind so we can talk about her. I'm sure she won't hear us or guess what we're up to.

This is getting more James Wanny by the minute.

Okay so there's some Polish dead guy in the basement or something with a bunch of dead bodies stashed in the wall? I'm not sure, I missed the Reveal because I stopped caring, and when I stop caring, I stop listening, and you can always tell when I'm about to dump a boyfriend because I start saying "Huh?" a lot. But that's beside the point.

World's worst ventriloquist act.

Slutty teen's potential boyfriend gets killed and Slutty Teen reacts to this with mild astonishment bordering on slight abdominal discomfort.

Henry Thomas gets possessed.
Kid Sister stretches her mouth open a lot, rolls her eyes back and spider scurries up the walls, doing her best but not terribly original Linda Blair.
This sucks.

Fuck, and it's still not over? Really? You're just gonna start Chinese Checker possessing people all over the place, kill everyone and pin it on the teenage daughter? And then slap a last second "BOO!" scene right onto the last frame of film? Fine, fuck you too, movie. Smooch my ass cheeks. Flanagan, go back and re-watch Absentia. You started out with promise and ended up remaking Insidious and somehow made it even worse than it already was to begin with!

Maybe I should have stuck with The Mummy after all.