Why It Wasn't Scary: A PG-13 movie based on Hasbro's silly Ouija board game and adapted by Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes label? Yep, that's pretty much all you need to know about why this recent horror dud is one of the least-scary entries into the genre in quite some time. For starters, barely anyone at all dies in this movie, the deaths are tame and lack gore, the antagonist has little presence throughout, the characters are irritating and act illogically, and simply, there's never any impetus to care about what's happening to anyone in the movie at all. Worse than simply being unoriginal, Ouija is horror that even most tweens will find too safe and predictable. If you can't see every single jump scare coming, it's probably because you're lapsing in and out of consciousness from sheer boredom. How To Improve It: Don't focus quite so much on the Ouija board gimmick throughout (which might be a challenge given the movie's title), give it an R-rating, ramp up the body count and general gore, cut down on the jump scares, give genre legend Lin Shaye plenty more to do (she's easily the best thing in it), and make the characters do more than merely act as conduits for exposition-laden dialogue. Which totally un-scary horror flicks have stuck in your mind over the years? Shout it out in the comments!
Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes).
General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.
