Here is a prequel to Ouija (2014) though I did not see that film. Interestingly, that one is very poorly rated (4.4) and yet somehow spawned another film that is better rated (6.6). Usually sequels/prequels are worse than the original.
The movie opens in 1967 at a séance where Alice Zander (Elizabeth Reaser) is helping a man and his daughter contact a recently departed wife. Though the daughter is extremely skeptical and thinks they are being conned, her father is convinced. Afterward, the tricks that were used are exposed. Alice's daughters, Lina (Annalise Basso) and Doris (Lulu Wilson), provided the special effects for the séance. Alice's husband died about a year before and she has taken up her mother's profession to make ends meet.
Lina, a high school sophomore, attends a party where a Ouija board is deployed. She suggests that her mother add it to 'the act.' Alice does exactly that and unintentionally provides an egress for dark spirits that haunt the house.
Lulu Wilson is awesome as the possessed daughter, Doris. Her deadpan delivery of asphyxiation to the unfortunate Mikey was amazingly creepy. When she would whisper in someone's ear, it was freaky. When Father Tom (Henry Thomas) confronted her in the basement, she proved that a 10 year-old girl can be terrifying.
The ghosts in the house arrived after World War II but Lina was born in 1951. We are led to believe that her parents lived in the house while Alice was pregnant. Shouldn't Alice have been aware of dark doings in the house from the five years before she moved in? Didn't her neighbors mention the creepy German doctor?
This is the second Mike Flanagan film I have seen, the last being Oculus (2013) which was also quite good. Definitely worth seeing, especially for horror fans.
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