Origin of Evil can't escape its future

Annalise Basso, Lulu Wilson and Elizabeth Reaser in Ouija: Origin of Evil. Image courtesy Universal Pictures.

It’d be a blessing if Ouija: Origin of Evil existed in a universe not graced by the presence of its predecessor, Ouija. The latter film was among the worst films released in 2014, a risible horror flick forged with little talent or insight into the genre, its sole focus to sell more of the titular board game. It is as bad as bad can be, which makes it all the more surprising that Origin of Evil, a prequel explaining Ouija’s backstory, is mostly a pretty solid flick with decent scares and good performances from the central cast. Yet the prequel can't escape the vibes of its predecessor, which infects the final act so strongly it diminishes the entirety of the viewing experience in the process.

Origin of Evil is good enough before it goes to pot though, using a grounded story to serve as a base and offer an explanation for the chaos that ensues later. There's a level of sympathy inherent to a story in which a widow (Elizabeth Reaser) and her two daughters (Annalise Basso as the eldest child, Lulu Wilson as the younger one) struggle to adapt to a world without their emotional bedrock and main source of income. They're struggling to thrive, and it’s easy to understand why once Wilson's character seemingly begins to communicate with the lost beloveds like Reaser’s dead husband the mother would consider that a gift instead of a curse. Her inability to leave the past behind is shown as a heartbreaking flaw, especially when contrasted with the comparative peacefulness Henry Thomas' priest has discussing his dead wife. Reaser's obsession explains why she'd allow the strange behavior her youngest daughter displays to continue; acting rationally is often impossible for people blinded by grief and false hope.

Once the machinations for the creeping terror are set, Origin of Evil proceeds to ramp up the chills and create a discomfiting environment for the family and the audience. The film uses silence like a dagger, cutting off the soundtrack and much of the ambient noise as it prepares to launch another fright at the family. It also plays with the anticipation the audience has for the scenario; writer/director Mike Flanagan and cowriter Jeff Howard know the audience is waiting for something to happen, and they'll drag out that something for what feels like an eternity.

Just those factors alone show how many leagues greater Origin of Evil is than Ouija. Sadly, the newer film acts out one of its main themes by being unable to leave the dead buried. The film is obliged to follow through to set the big bads (the ones played by Reaser and Wilson) in Ouija, and while this one does provide the central family a level of kindness and decency not granted to it in the first film, it still has to tailor its story to link back to 2014 edition. This really comes through with an incredibly rushed and anticlimactic final act offering a weak connection with Nazis to explain the source of the house's evil. It feels as if Flanagan and Howard couldn't find a more organic method of tying in the end of this film with the events of the first one, thus cramming in what is ultimately an unsatisfying final act. The logical leap the film takes to reach its big conclusion is massive and often painful and takes the easiest way out of explaining things.

There is one additional issue this film faces not necessarily dependent upon how bad Ouija is. Like many horror films, Origin of Evil uses its child actress as a vessel for evil, using large amounts of makeup and special effects to make her appear to be a malevolent beast. It’s much more comical than scary though, especially when poor Wilson scampers about a hallway with her eyes all white and demon voices streaming from her small form. And, really, kids don’t need makeup or effects to appear horrifying; Wilson is unnerving enough with a simple glance or toothy smile, appearing like a little shark preparing to consume her prey. The film is wonderfully effective when it has Wilson acting as a spirit attempting to act as an innocent child; it falters when Wilson is made up to be the monster the first Ouija makes her out to be.

Review: Two and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 99 minutes

Genre: Horror

Ask Away

Target audience: The people who liked the original and/or people digging for a horror flick for the season.

Take the whole family?: There is a little graphic violence that'll bother young kids. Best to stick within a couple of years of the rating.

Theater or Netflix?: There are worse things to see during the Halloween season, as long as you don't pay full price.

Why would they even make a second film?: Artistically there really was no reason for it; the film's 7 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes isn't a great indicator of quality, and it's not a film star Olivia Cooke prefers to talk about. Money is definitely the key, and that first film made more than $50 million domestically off of a $5 million budget, per Box Office Mojo. Even a bad film like Ouija can do well with a budget that microscopic.

Watch this instead?: This film lifts enough elements from much stronger films – Poltergeist, The Exorcist, and even the main flaw of The Last Exorcism, – it makes it simple to recommend other flicks to watch. For horror fans, hit up Stake Land and enjoy one of the best vampire flicks to come out this decade.

The Accountant proves itself a bad idea

Ben Affleck does math in The Accountant. Image courtesy Warner Bros.

It’s easy to figure out how bad The Accountant is by reading its synopsis. This is a film, after all, that has Ben Affleck as an autistic accountant who goes on murderous, vengeful rampages when the occasion for such actions occur. Read that summary again and let the awfulness of this idea wash over you, because, again, this film stars Ben Affleck as the eponymous autistic bean counter who kills ruthlessly and efficiently. Because Affleck's character is autistic, and, per the film's logic, autistic people feel less remorse for their actions than average people do and have little comprehension of the consequences their actions incur. The film, in effect, reveals why autistic people would make for the best mass murderers, because they’d be so intensely focused on the task the inhumanity of the acts wouldn’t even dawn on them.

The Accountant thrives on stereotypes. It covers how autistic people have trouble interacting with people; how well they can comprehend difficult mathematical concepts; their issues with loud noises and over stimulation; their difficulty with eye contact; and their problems engaging in romantic relationships. It presents these facets in an easy to read fashion, falling back on all the clichés used by filmmakers to indicate autism without delving into the true ramifications or depths of it, the pain and sadness of always being a few miles away from everyone else. Affleck's take is the take most actors use; a confused blank canvas whose existence is defined by the surface and lacks anything underneath the lost exterior. Some credit goes to Affleck for not overindulging in ticks or wobbly strangeness like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, but he adds little else to the formula set before him. He is defined by his autism, as many filmmakers believe people with autism are.

Strangely, it takes a suspiciously long amount of time for the film to admit verbally Affleck’s killer has autism. The first act features a scene with a young Affleck and his parents visiting a specialist, who outlines the boy’s symptoms that are shorthand for autism. Yet the word is not mentioned at all; rather, the film uses the “I'm not saying, I'm just saying” approach to insinuate as heavily as possible that Affleck's character is autistic. It's an incredibly cowardly bit of filmmaking to insinuate a diagnosis like that, as if they're afraid to actually say “autism.” Which is a little weird considering the last few minutes of the film play as something of an odd to those along the autism spectrum, including a quote of the current statistics and the concept of greatness hidden behind the veil of their personalities and moderate oddities. The Accountant even takes the time to bring up some famous historical figures who may have been autistic (Lewis Carroll among them), which  really makes that initial hesitation to say the word autism doubly annoying.

The Accountant is a pretty annoying viewing experience setting aside the awful premise. Talented costars Anna Kendrick, Jeffrey Tambor, J. K. Simmons, Jon Bernthal (the closest anyone gets to being interesting), John Lithgow and Cynthia Addai-Robinson waste their time waiting for Affleck to do something.  It has little storytelling ingenuity, riding several minutes of J. K. Simmons exposition to explain plot points residing somewhere between key and middling. That much of the exposition is redundant exacerbates the run time that is already much longer than the story has any right to justify. And the filmmakers, director Gavin O'Connor and Bill Dubuque, frequently alert viewers to impending twist reveals with the cinematic equivalent of the elbow jab, vomiting in tiny reveals leading to a grander reveal that feels oh so clever. They're like the house cat who kills a pigeon and leaves it at the front stoop, so proud of its relatively minor accomplishment.

It’s that autism angle that bothers me the most, because eliminating whatever layer of autism O'Connor and Dubuque inserted into Affleck's character has no effect on the story. This would still be a pretty basic story of a loner who seeks revenge for lost friendships and abides by a moral code, like the Driver in Drive. Affleck's autism doesn’t have an effect on his machinations or even serve as a reason for his aloofness, considering the filmmakers lobbed in an abusive father backstory that more than explains his character’s difficulties with people. O'Connor and Dubuque use autism as a cheap, lazy storytelling trick, which is the most offensive part of their abysmal movie.

Review: One out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trainer.

Rating: R

Run time: 128 minutes

Genre: Action

Ask Away

Target audience: I haven't the foggiest.

Take the whole family?: This is a pretty bloody, violent film, so don't take the kids with you if you decide to go.

Theater or Netflix?: If you're really fascinated by the concept of Ben Affleck as an autistic murderer, do yourself a favor and at least wait for the home option.

Are there any good films about autism?: Not that I've seen, although Temple Grandin is supposed to be pretty good. So many of these films feature actors playing with little hand quirks and head rolls they never bother to capture the depth of the characters they're playing. It gets frustrating watching people try to AUTISM on screen.

Watch this instead?: Hit up The Bourne Identity to get your fix on a high quality action flick with a complicated central figure. Drive also does tackle the complexities of humanity and love with tremendous blood and grace, along with iconic turns from Ryan Gosling and Al Brooks.

Girl on the Train wastes talent, time

Emily Blunt stars in The Girl on the Train. Image courtesy Universal Pictures.

The Girl on the Train opens with the eponymous commuter Rachel (Emily Blunt) declaring in a voiceover that she has an overactive imagination. The point of the line and the others that spill out from Rachel’s mind during the opening is to put the viewer inside the unfiltered mind of the film's featured character while revealing her unreliability as a narrator. That she immediately stops telling the story is a problematic approach to the set up, as the film shifts away from her eyes to incorporate the stories of token housewife Anna (Rebecca Ferguson) and the soon-to-be missing Megan (Haley Bennett) to connect the three women to one singular narrative. It essentially took less than five minutes for this film to defeat the purpose of its introduction, along with much of the intrigue of its existence.

Alas, this isn't an unexpected flaw in a film full of them. The Girl on the Train is a silly little blunder that tries ever so hard to be lurid and dangerous but comes off instead as an above average Lifetime film with a hint more steaminess. Its central mystery is easy to resolve once the main players – the three women along with characters played by Luke Evans, Justin Theroux and Edgar Ramirez – are introduced and settled in. It features mediocre to subpar performances – even the oft great Blunt can't make the material work in her favor – and misused moments from the usually sublime Lisa Kudrow and Allison Janney, along with some perfectly preposterous dialog. The scenes are shot cold and distant as a film like this could be, but the movie lacks quality cinematography and the aesthetics are those not belonging to a film with this wide of release. Everything is so serious, and the tone is so poorly established, the movie sets itself up to be glorious camp, especially whenever Theroux enters to snack on scenery. The Girl on the Train would be a much more entertaining film had the filmmakers followed Theroux’s example and inserted a smirk in every scene.

What's truly weird about the whole experience is the heavy emphasis on motherhood among the three female characters and how the concept of being a mother effectively defines their femininity. All three women are influenced by a child in some capacity, be it having one, losing one, or being unable to conceive at all, and their personalities are tailored to what level of ability they have for it. The only one of the three granted any perception of happiness is the one willing to trade her independence and hope to be with a monster to raise her child; the other women are depicted as incomplete and empty.  The concept is inherently regressive and dehumanizing (although it does result in the best bad line of the film) and the extremes the filmmakers take it is disturbing. The Girl on the Train effectively punishes characters for their failures as mothers through characterization (Blunt's Rachel as a morose alcoholic) and through physical pain as the film progresses. That the film could serve as a criticism for society's blame in these categorizations is moot considering how often the film luxuriates in Rachel's sadness and the pain wrought to the other women.

Blunt's Rachel is the source of many of The Girl on the Train's ailments. As the key to the mystery of the missing woman, the film uses her alcoholism as a way to obfuscate the mystery while faulting Rachel for not doing more to stop the crime she eventually solves. It would work in a Memento fashion if the film constructed the narrative around her and the memories she can't recapture as it teases a possible violent streak aroused during her states of inebriation. But the incorporation of the other women and their stories negates the impact of her lost memory and the possibility of her being the person responsible for the disappearance. The audience isn't required to trust Rachel to understand the story; rather, viewers watch her stumble about and wait for the memories of the night in question to reappear again and indicate the most logical candidate for the crime. (On a side note, the film does a rather poor job employing red herrings.) Watching an alcoholic stumble through an investigation is less interesting than interpreting his or her lost memories, and the film never seems to capture this, or any concept, it aims to depict.

Rating: Two out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 112 minutes

Genre: Thriller

Ask Away

Target audience: Those who read and love the book.

Take the whole family?: The “R” rating is fair enough, so stick with that and keep the kiddos at home.

Theater or Netflix?: Stream to pair it with a low-priced pinot grigio.

Does this pass the Bechdel test?: I had this discussion with a woman who came with me to see it, and we couldn't really come up with a solid answer for it. Despite the film centering on three women, their discussions are either about a man or an issue related to a man. The closest the film gets to not having that discussion involves conversations Lisa Kudrow has with other women about bad restaurants, and those are more background noise than anything. That the film apparently elicited a description as a “sausage party” overheard by my fellow moviegoer underlines the aforementioned issue.

Watch this instead?: Every time I see Justin Theroux, I want to watch Mulholland Drive or Inland Empire. And because I always recommend Mulholland Drive, you should also sit down and watch Memento to see how a film can effectively work with a memory lapsing protagonist.