Longtime readers of this blog probably know that I am a deeply skeptical person. I am a pure existentialist. I believe this is all there is and we make our own meanings in this life. This might seem at odds with my appetite for horror movies, but I had an understanding about the willing suspension of disbelief from an early age. There are uses for fantasy even to an adult mind. It can be the valve on a pressure cooker. But even I have limits. I did not like 2014's Ouija, in part because Ouija boards are such obvious humbugs (in the original meaning of that word, not the Ebeneezer Scrooge version). They are so easy to debunk that I cannot believe that otherwise intelligent people fall for them. Maybe I'm giving reason too much credit, especially in the current political moment when a large portion of the body politic would love nothing more than to roll back the enlightenment. "It's just a game," is the riposte to my skepticism, but that hardly accounts for how seriously many people take them. P. T. Barnum would have recognized this age of credulity. Now, as in Barnum's time, there's a sucker born every minute. The film compounded my ingrained scorn by being a terrible film and I admit that my experience with it put me off seeing its sequel even though it is well-regarded by people whose tastes I respect. Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016) has a director I like, too, though at the time of its release I didn't know Mike Flanagan from Adam. I like Flanagan's movies, so I suppose it was inevitable that I would eventually get around to Origin of Evil. And here we are, ten years later.
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