Wednesday, January 14, 2015

The Ouija Experiment (2011)

A group of annoying friends decides to play with a Ouija board and see what happens. One of the guys is taping everything so he can post it online and become famous when it goes viral.  The others are irritated by the camera constantly being shoved in their faces.

Micheal tells the group there are three rules they have to follow. Don't ask the ghost how he died. Don't ask how you will die.  And the most important rule of all.... is the point that one of the girls chooses to head to the bathroom.  No one shall ask why Michael doesn't wait until she gets back before telling this most important rule.

The third rule turns out to be always say goodbye at the end of your Ouija session. If you don't, it leaves a passage open for the spirits, and you don't want them coming into your house. They'll mess shit up.

Needless to say, rules are broken, and things go horribly wrong for those involved.

This is the only movie I've ever seen where a group who manages to contact the dead asks the Ouija board questions about themselves.  Who is my boyfriend texting right now?  Is he seeing someone behind my back? Does anyone know about his cheating?  Seriously?  You've got a connection to a supernatural being and you're going to ask it questions about what's going on in your life?  Wow. Just wow.

Then three quarters of the way through the movie, they must have run out of steam since they switch to a flashback of the people who used to live in Michael's house. Not sure how a found footage movie can have a flashback to a time that involves people who used to live in the house, but Michael finds a scrapbook in the attic which is full of newspaper clippings regarding a murder in the house. Whose scrapbook was it? If I move into a house and it's a murder house, I'm not going to keep clippings on it. And why didn't Michael clean out his attic when he moved in?

There are two pieces of mythology I don't think I've heard in any other ghost movies. First is that ghosts don't like video cameras, said by the girl who leaves her camera on all night. The second is that the spirit has to say goodbye to end the session. This makes no sense. So all the supernatural entity has to do to keep that pathway open is refuse to say goodbye and this world will be overrun by evil spirits.


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