"One of the 50 Coolest Websites...they simply tell it like it is" - TIME
Ouija | 2014 | PG-13 | - 1.5.3
A high school teen (Olivia Cook) gathers her friends to look for answers about the mysterious death of a member of their circle (Shelley Hennig). They consult an old Ouija board, attempting to contact the dead teen to learn what happened after she recorded herself using the board. The friends receive more than expected, as they awaken the dead. Also with Daren Kagasoff, Douglas Smith, Ana Coto, Bianca A. Santos, Erin Moriarty and Vivis Colombetti. Directed by Stiles White. [1:29]
SEX/NUDITY 1 - A teen girl and a teen boy kiss briefly in two scenes.
► Teen girls try on prom dresses that reveal a little cleavage. Teen girls wear blouses that reveal slight cleavage. A teen girl wears a bodysuit with tights, baring her shoulders and arms and accentuating the curves of her buttocks.
VIOLENCE/GORE 5 - A teen girl looks through the glass of a Ouija board hand piece and her eyes glass over, becoming white; we then see a staircase and the girl's body drops into an open stairwell from a second floor landing where she hangs by her broken neck from a double string of holiday lights. A teenager thinks he sees his dead girlfriend, alive in his room until a preteen girl ghost with sewn lips appears to the teen boy and his eyes glaze over to total white; the preteen ghost screams loudly and black stitches sew the boy's lips shut and the camera cuts to his friends at school, who say that he is dead. In two scenes, either of two teen girls flosses her teeth; in the first scene, the unaided floss stitches her lips shut with black stitches while she tries to scream and the tub overflows as her eyes glaze over and she rises off the floor with her forehead drooped forward and hits the sink hard (she falls to the floor on her side, eyes wide open and dead); in the second scene a teen girl flosses briefly, walks into her bedroom, finds a previously burned up planchette looking unharmed, looks through it's eyepiece and the screen snaps to black.
► Two teen girls consult an older woman who knows about spirit boards and the woman tells them to burn a board that is haunting them and to burn it with a mummy they found in a basement; they go to the house with the mummy and a male friend encounters a shrieking preteen girl ghost causing him to fall into a swimming pool, then appears in the living room dripping wet and his eyes have turned completely white and he has black stitches on his lips (he shouts and disappears); a teen girl puts a mummy into an incinerator and yellow flames rise as a preteen ghost girl pulls the teen into an air duct while the other teen girl grabs a spirit board and its hand piece to communicate with the preteen girl ghost, who climbs out of the air duct and grabs the living girl's hand and her eyes turn white until a spirit appears beside her and helps her remove the hand of the preteen girl ghost; the teen's eyes return to normal and the living girl throws the spirit board and hand piece into the incinerator where black smoke billows and smoke rolls out of the preteen girl ghost's mouth before she disappears.
► A teen girl cuts stitches out of the mouth of a mummy, which is dry and has no features apart from a small gaping mouth around the stitches and has wispy hair; a ghost appears and shouts, "No!" then charges the teen girl, but the spirit of the mummy appears as a preteen girl screams loudly until the ghost disappears in a burning scorch mark on a concrete wall before disappearing herself.
► Several teens hold two Ouija séances in the home of a dead teen girl and they hear loud thuds and doors slamming in the upstairs rooms directly over their heads in each scene and the spirit board says " Hi Friend" to the group; each of the five young men and young women sees "Hi Friend" the next day appearing on a concrete underpass wall, carved into a desktop, written in condensation on a car window (followed by clawed marks through it, but no hand), and on a laptop screen; in the first séance, a boy sees the dead girl's reflection in a glass door of a display case and something pushes him into it, breaking the glass (no injuries) and the spirit board says it is the dead teen girl; in the second séance, the board says it is "DZ" after a chair pulls itself out from the table at which they sit and the teens learn that their dead friend was murdered by a spirit and when the lights go out one boy and one girl go into the basement with their cell phone flashlights where they find a mummy lying on a table, covered with a green cloth and blue stones on its eyes; meanwhile a teen girl, looking through a glass in the spirit board planchette, sees a gaunt, gray preteen girl with her mouth shut by tight black stitches as the spirit board spells "She's Coming... Mother"; the teen girl sees a ghostly woman running toward her, screaming before it disappears.
► A teen boy appears in a doorway of two different houses, scaring a female friend he is to meet. A kitchen hallway door opens by itself and a teen girl finds the back door of her house open. A table lamp flickers on and off until a teen girl approaches it and it stays on. Two teen girls find their front door open and the wind blowing, then the door slams shut with a loud bang. A chandelier in a stairwell creaks and swings unaided. Twice, a gas stove burner lights by itself. A closet door in a dead girl's bedroom creaks open by itself, twice. A teen boy walks his bike under a low concrete underpass and a candle rolls to his feet; a shopping cart full of empty cans smashes past his face as he stoops to look at the candle, but does no harm. A teen girl goes into an attic and finds old family pictures from the 1940s and 50s; she screams as a foot and a leg step out from behind a wooden crate or wall and then steps back and she rushes downstairs to show a teen boy the box of pictures.
► A teen girl visits an elderly wheelchair-bound mental patient and the sister of the mummy she found in a basement; the woman says their mother was an evil medium who sewed her sister's mouth shut to stop spirits from talking through it and then killed the sister and put her in the basement. A teen boy and a teen girl find headlines online about two preteen girls and their mother; one of the girls killed their mom and the other disappeared. A teen girl revisits a mental hospital and hears from an elderly woman in a wheelchair that in the 1940s, she and her sister were both vessels through which demons talked for their mother, an evil medium; the old woman had promised to free her mouth-sewn, mummified sister as soon as she could and tricked the teen girl into cutting the stitches for her and the woman becomes excited, stands and shouts loudly as she laughs until two guards subdue her and sit her back into the wheelchair.
► A little girl screams while playing with a Ouija board, as she sees her sister in a shadow at home. A teen girl looks worried and throws a Ouija board and planchette into a fireplace, where it breaks apart in flames, but when she enters her bedroom she finds the board on her bed. A teen girl enters a bedroom with a flashlight and finds a Ouija board hand piece in the closet.
► At a wake in a dead teen girl's house, teen boys and teen girls are tearful while asking themselves if they could have prevented her suicide, but come up with no answers. A teen girl shouts loudly at a car parked outside her house and it moves away at high speed; she tells her younger sister sternly that a man inside the car is too old for her and insists the younger teen accompany her to a séance. A grandmother warns her granddaughters several times not to play with spirit boards, because they are dangerous. A teen boy says that a dead teen girl reported feeling spirits in the house. A teen boy tells male and female friends that they are haunting and a spirit board is coming after them.
LANGUAGE 3 - 6 mild obscenities, 1 scatological term, name-calling (spaz, crazy, insane, freaky, little girl), stereotypical references to teenagers, suicides, the possessed, spirit mediums, skeptics, believers, psychiatric nursing home residents, exclamations (zip it), 5 religious exclamations (e.g. Oh my God, Oh My G... [not spelled out completely]).
SUBSTANCE USE - None.
DISCUSSION TOPICS - Teen suicide, the supernatural, mediums, divining spirits, witchcraft, death, speaking with the dead, ghosts.
MESSAGE - Do not take the supernatural lightly.
CAVEATS
Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.
We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.
Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.
how to
support us
PLEASE DONATE
We are a totally independent website with no connections to political, religious or other groups & we neither solicit nor choose advertisers. You can help us keep our independence with a donation.
NO MORE ADS!
Become a member of our premium site for just $1/month & access advance reviews, without any ads, not a single one, ever. And you will be helping support our website & our efforts.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
We welcome suggestions & criticisms -- and we accept compliments too. While we read all emails & try to reply we don't always manage to do so; be assured that we will not share your e-mail address.
how to
support us
PLEASE DONATE
We are a totally independent website with no connections to political, religious or other groups & we neither solicit nor choose advertisers. You can help us keep our independence with a donation.
NO MORE ADS!
Become a member of our premium site for just $2/month & access advance reviews, without any ads, not a single one, ever. And you will be helping support our website & our efforts.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
We welcome suggestions & criticisms -- and we will accept compliments too. While we read all emails & try to reply we do not always manage to do so; be assured that we will not share your e-mail address.