Review: 'Ouija' puts the bored into board game movies

'Ouija' is a dead teenager movie aimed squarely at a teen audience.

Universal's effort to reclaim its place as the Home for Horror takes a step backward with this duller-than-dull 89 minutes. Frankly, the board game is scarier, but only if you break the rules.

As kids, Debbie (Shelley Hennig) and Laine (Olivia Cooke) knew 'em: Never play alone. Never play in a graveyard. Always say 'Good-bye.'

But as a teen, Debbie's picked up a board, toyed with the magical 'unseen hand' planchette, with its eye hole for spying ghosts. Next thing you know, she's hanged herself.

Laine is beside herself. Well, not exactly. Cooke, the star of this cast of pretty bland young things, rarely suggests much emotion at all. And the others take their lead from her.

Laine wants some closure, so she picks up Debbie's board, rounds up her boyfriend (Daren Kagasoff), her Goth-brat sister (Ana Coto), the dead girl's beau (Douglas Smith) and the exotic Isabelle (Bianca A. Santos) for a little seance.

When they chant, 'As friends we gather, hearts are true, spirits near, we call to you,' and doors creak open and chairs slide away from the table, kids being kids, they don't take the hint.

Death and terror ensue.

Three horror movies ('The Signal,' 'The Quiet Ones') and one horror TV series ('Bates Motel') into her career, and Cooke still doesn't show any sign that she has what it takes to become a Scream Queen. She treats supernatural goings-on and friends dying with little more than a pert little shrug.

Nobody else makes much of an impression, even horror vet and studio chief sibling Lin Shaye ('2001 Maniacs').

After 'Ouija' and 'Dracula Untold,' who will buy Universal as a serious home for horror? Tod Browning and Bela Lugosi are rolling in their graves.

'Ouija'

Onestar

out of four stars

Rated PG-13; disturbing violent content, frightening horror images, and thematic material

1 hour, 29 minutes

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