Cooke, a young Brit seen on TV’s “Bates Motel,” is strong as the diminutive brunette at the center of the interworldly fright-fest. Her charisma is almost enough to keep you from rolling your eyes at the script.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Given its double burden of being both a toy adaptation and a bloodless kiddie horror show, Ouija winds up being more fun that you might think, even if it's the sort of film you can't really take seriously for a second.
A deadly dull and overly familiar movie about summoning ghosts that draws upon nearly every horror movie cliché.
New York Post by Farran Smith Nehme
It’s endearing how this glorified haunted-house movie tries to reclaim all the old tools, and do so with a straight face and a PG-13 level of violence.
The Hollywood Reporter by Frank Scheck
In the absence of anything truly original in the screenplay he co-wrote with Juliet Snowden, director Stiles White vainly attempts to ratchet up the tension with a series of cheap jump scares fueled by loud noises that are the cinematic equivalent of shaking hands with someone wearing a joy buzzer.
This silly but straight-faced supernatural thriller manages to elicit an occasional shudder in between cheap jolts and false scares, emerging as a feat of competent direction (by debuting helmer Stiles White) over derivative scripting (by White and writing partner Juliet Snowden).
St. Louis Post-Dispatch by Kevin C. Johnson
Directed by Stiles White, whose credits lean more heavily in the special-effect arenas, Ouija is bland, safe horror for those who like their scares nonexistent.
The film is effectively scary, filled with plenty of jump moments and a few slow-burning scenes, but the scares aren’t enough to balance the poor writing and lack of imagination.
San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle
Ouija has something wrong with it from the first five minutes.
The most pressing issue with Ouija is that Stiles and Snowden cannot seem to write a single interesting line of dialogue. They volley between conversational banalities and whatever exposition might be needed to get the film to its next scary setpiece.