Friday, August 28, 2015

THE OUIJA EXPERIMENT 2: THEATRE OF DEATH




IMDb
A group of unsuspecting theatre goers are trapped, after a ravenous spirit is resurrected and released from a Ouija board.


HorrorNews
YNOPSIS:
A group of unsuspecting theatre goers are trapped, after a ravenous spirit is resurrected and released from a Ouija board.
REVIEW:
I looked this up before I got started. The title I found for it is actually The Ouija Experiment 2:Theater of Death. Apparently this is a sequel to another film. Having not seen the first one, I’m coming into this a bit blind. However, I should point out that the opening credits do a bit of a summary of the events of the first film, so there’s that.
Short version of that summary – Don’t mess with ouija boards. Just freaking don’t.
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Moving on….
The first film looks like a “found footage” style movie, with our characters playing around with a ouija board and filming the results.
This film breaks the fourth wall by opening with the “cast” of the original film (all playing themselves in this case)at the premiere of their footage in a movie theater.
Swisyzinna, Justin Armstrong, and Eric Window come on stage with the theater manager Ty (Eric Zettina) and start taking questions from the audience. During the Q & A, weird stuff starts to happen. One of the audience members asks about the legend of the theater itself, a story that says a family of cannibals used to own it and ate babies and stuff.
Foreshadow much?
So this is the big “Ouija Weekend” event, and the theater owner has a great promotion for the show attendees. Attendees can win tickets to spend the night in the theater for an overnight haunted tour with the cast of the film. Basically, the first 15 minutes of the film appear to be actual footage from the premiere screening of their first film. The cast signing autographs and posing for pics, that sort of thing. and the sound is atrocious. Really, really awful.
Anyway, the cast get together and discuss the “storyline” for the overnight haunt. It’s all supposed to be a set up, a haunted attraction event to give the fans a good fright. Turns out Justin didn’t get his copy. See, everything was laid out in detail on a group page on-line but since Justin can’t spell the word “ouija”, he never found it.
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Eric and theater assistant Elena (Jessica Willis), instead of helping set up the stages, decide to have a little fun by playing with the prop ouija board from the movie. There’s no way this could end badly, right?
Because the rule is…never stop playing with a ouija board without saying “goodbye”.
You geussed it. They totally space that part. Wanna geuss what happens next?
As for supporting characters, I have to make mention of the local sheriff, played by Tom Zembrod. The Sheriff isn’t a big fan of people playing around with the supernatural, and tries to warn everyone that they should leave well enough alone. No one ever listens to “that guy” in any movie, but of course he turns out to be right.
I do like that the film is very self aware. There are quite a few movie trope jokes. In a scene early in the film, Swisyzinna drops her keys under an alley staircase. As she bumbles down the stairs in 5 inch heels to retrieve them, she exclaims “Why you gotta be the black girl that dies first in the movie?” She doesn’t die there, but the fact that bit of dialougue exists gives me some small joy.
Otherwise, we have a whole lot actors walking around dark corridors shouting “Is someone there” over and over again. We get some fun noises off camera, and the occaisional “cloud of evil” rushing through.
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When we finally do get to the good stuff (about 30 minutes in, which isn’t so bad), it comes fast and furious. They don’t pussyfoot around when they get down to it, and while the effects aren’t brilliant, there’s a good amount of “jump and boo” that’s appropiate.
One great hook is the “video glasses”. Sunglasses with a built it SD card that double as a video camera. One of the better sequences in the film uses this hook and it’s pretty cool.
This isn’t a great film, but to be fair it isn’t necessarily awful. A little slow, and the sound mix is extremely annoying. On the whole, if there’s nothing else better to do, it’s an acceptable waste of 86 minutes.
So on a scale of one to ten, ten being awesome, I’m giving this film 5 ouija boards
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