Ouija Hell House
Danielle has her hands full, a single mother of two teenage girls, Michelle brimming with attitude and angry at everyone, her school having firmly suggested that she might wish to remove herself from their responsibility, and Sierra, mute for undisclosed and undiscussed reasons, possibly because she has no desire to communicate with her appalling sibling, but constantly recording video footage.
Relocated to the rural house of the girls’ recently deceased grandmother, Danielle hoping a change of circumstance might help them make a fresh start, the plan is only half formed, isolated, away from amenities or friends and with the house needing renovation, problems with power and water and nothing to distract from their grudges and resentments, Danielle in a moment of desperation suggesting they play on the Ouija board found in the basement.
Directed by Conjuring The Beyond‘s Calvin Morie McCarthy, unlike the misrepresentation of Amityville Poltergeist his invitation to the Ouija Hell House offers exactly what the name suggests: there is a Ouija board, it is set in a house, though not a farmhouse despite the dialogue describing it as such, and it is absolute Hell, McCarthy’s script seemingly cobbled together by moving the planchette around the board and assembling the incoherent result.
Why was Michelle expelled, other than obviously being too cool for school? She doesn’t want to talk about it, but since it involved the drug death of her best friend Kimmy (Naomi Mechem-Miller) it might be presumed that Danielle could express some measure of morbid curiosity even if not inclined to stretch to the radical position of parental concern, confirmation of her profound indifference and lack of preparedness to her younger daughter and the move.
Why does Sierra obsessively record every moment of her days on her camcorder? Does she archive it, or just run one memory card over and over, deleting what came before? Why, when capturing footage which cannot possibly be, her bullying sister in two places at once, contorting, other strange occurrences in the dark and shadows, does she not try to first check the footage or show it to her mother? Why not indeed.
Do any of these people have lives, jobs, personalities, hopes, ambitions, even a change of clothes? Is Sierra mute simply to avoid having to write additional dialogue beyond the two verbal characters wandering around in a daze and sniping at each other? Is her perma-Beanie in place to hide her lobotomy scar? Pairing the pacing of Paranormal Activity with what looks like a store bought Hallowe’en costume, few of these questions will be answered without a coda introducing random new characters to explain events ex post facto.
Ouija Hell House is available on digital download now
