ouijaStarring Elizabeth Reaser, Annalise Basso, Lulu Wilson, Henry Thomas, Doug Jones

Directed by Mike Flanagan

Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, out now

A grieving spiritualist mother and her young daughters discover the buried dangers of an ancient game…

Set 50 years before the original Ouija movie, Mike Flanagan’s prequel is an enjoyable horror flick. Alice Zander believes that the Ouija board that she’s using is putting her touch with her dead husband – but (surprise, surprise) that isn’t the case, and mayhem ensues.

Flanagan wanted to make a movie that fits in with the period in which it’s set, and there’s definitely more than a few hints of other genre contributions from the 60s and 70s – The Exorcist (with this film’s Exorcist played by another old genre favourite, Henry Thomas of ET fame) in particular – as well as the trappings of the time. We even get the old Universal logo to go alongside Nazi experiments and the space programme.

The first hour (of 100 minutes) builds up the characters so that we’re invested to a large extent once all hell starts to let loose in the third act. That doesn’t all hang together quite as well as it should, but it’s still a lot better than a number of recent movies whose finales are completely unjustified.

The home entertainment release includes a commentary track by Flanagan, who demonstrates his love of the genre, and is particularly interesting when he discusses how he achieved the look of the movie. If you feel you’ve not had enough Doug Jones by the end of the film, the deleted scenes will fill the gap; the mini featurette on Lulu Wilson, who plays Doris, is the most interesting otherwise – the making of could have done with two to three times the running time.

Verdict: A surprisingly enjoyable movie that could easily have worked without the Hasbro links. 7/10

Paul Simpson