- Directed by Stiles White
- Written by Juliet Snowden, Stiles White
- Stars Olivia Cooke, Ana Coto, Daren Kagasoff, Bianca A. Santos
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 29 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_T1Jj1inE8M
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This was a pretty good one with dangerous ghosts and a little bit of a mystery to be solved to get some young folks out of the predicament they’ve gotten themselves into. We say young folks because it’s not teenagers playing teenagers. But that aside, it’s well made.
Synopsis
Young Laine learns the rules for using the Ouija board, and she plays it with her friend, Debbie. Sarah interrupts and scares them both.
Years later, a grown-up Debbie plays the game alone and then throws the board into the fire. Laine comes over, and Debbie tells her that the Ouija board has her freaked out. She goes back inside alone, and the kitchen seems to have a mind of its own. She goes upstairs to find the Ouija board is back, intact. She then hangs herself as credits roll.
Trevor brings a map to show Laine; he wants her to come with him on his upcoming camping trip. She gets a call from her dad, who tells her about Debbie. There’s a big funeral, and all Debbie’s friends are there. Debbie’s mom gives Laine a box of stuff to take home. She asks Laine to watch over her house since she’s leaving town.
Laine yells at her sister Sarah about sneaking out. At Debbie’s house, Laine waters the plants and hears something upstairs. She finds the Ouija board and takes it home. She asks Pete if Debbie has been acting differently, and he admits that she’d been weird for a couple of weeks. She talks to Trevor and Isabelle about consulting with Debbie through the Ouija board.
Laine, Sarah, Trevor, and Isabelle go to Debbie’s house and use the board. Pete’s there, too, and he surprises them. Debbie soon says, “Hi, friend.” Suddenly, the power goes out. They all get spooked and go home. They all figure Laine was moving the planchette out of a need to say goodbye.
Laine’s Nona warns her that Ouija boards are evil and that she should get rid of it. As the day progresses, each of the friends gets a message from Debbie. Is she trying to give them all something? The only way to be sure is to use the Ouija board again. Pete asks a personal question, and it’s not Debbie answering this time; it’s “DC.” DC admits that Debbie made contact, and they were talking. “Run. Hide. She is coming. Mother.” Laine looks through the planchette and sees a ghost in the room.
Laine and Sarah watch a video of Debbie finding the Ouija board in her attic; it must have belonged to the previous owners. The recording shows her playing the game alone, and she gets the same “Hi friend” message as they did.
Isabelle is at home alone and is possessed. She bangs her head on the sink and is killed. Trevor and Pete blame Laine for getting them into this.
Laine goes up into Debbie’s attic, where Debbie first found the Ouija board. She finds a box of stuff up there and gets a scare to go with it. There are photos from the 1940s of a family, and they seem to be connected to the house. Doris Zander was a 10-year-old girl who lived in that house, and she went missing. Laine goes to see Doris’s sister, Pauline, an old woman living in an institution.
Doris and Pauline’s mother was a successful medium who used Doris to channel the dead, but something went wrong. Their mother went insane and sewed Doris’s lips shut and then killed her. Pauline killed their mother, which is why she’s locked up. “You need to cut the stitches from Doris’s mouth. Mother will try to stop you.” Doris is buried in the basement.
Laine, Trevor, and Pete go into the basement, but the two guys are soon locked in another room, leaving Laine and Sarah to dig alone. Laine finds Doris’s body, but then her flashlight stops working. She cuts the threads holding Doris’s mouth shut, and Mother attacks. Doris screams, and Mother vanishes.
Later, Dead-Debbie appears and makes Pete’s mouth get sewn shut before killing him. Laine goes back to see Pauline, who lied to her. “She’s free.” Her mother wasn’t the one who was evil. Both Doris and Pauline heard the voice, and “She’s coming to get you too!”
Nona says that they must destroy both the board and Doris’s body; that’s the only way to sever the connection. Trevor gets to the house first, but the swimming pool cover kills him.
Doris grabs Sarah, but Laine has the board, so Doris has to play with her. As Doris tries to possess Laine, Dead-Debbie intervenes and slows her down long enough for Sarah to dump the body and the board into the fire. Doris vanishes in a cloud of smoke.
Laine and Sarah go home with no friends left. What happened to all the dark spirits that were inside Doris? Laine soon finds the planchette in her room; they didn’t bury that…
Commentary
This was approved officially by Hasbro??? Well, it’ll probably sell more boards.
The main characters are all supposed to be teenagers attending high school, yet the actors are all well into their twenties. Some of them are not pulling it off.
It was actually pretty good!