Netflix Just Added an Underrated Horror Film

As Netflix is want to do, some new movies and TV shows have arrived on the service today and with the other content that is there the streamer has added an underrated horror movie of the past decade, 2016’s Ouija: Origin of Evil. We know what you’re thinking, with a title like that this seems almost certain to be a stinker, and perhaps worthy of being in the Netflix catalogue, but the film from director Mike Flanagan has widely been praised ever since it was released and put him on the path to other major hits like Midnight Mass, The Haunting of Hill House, and Doctor Sleep.

A prequel to the 2014 movie Ouija, based on the Hasbro board game and itself a critically reviled movie, Origin of Evil is a period piece film set in Los Angeles in the late 1960s. In the film Elizabeth Reaser stars as Alice, a mother to Annalise Basso’s “Lina” Zander (a character seen as an elderly woman in the first film) and Lulu Wilson’s Doris. For money Alice works as a psychic medium but what Origin of Evil does at the start that separates it from the pack is makes it clear that Alice and her kids aren’t actually psychics and are pulling a fast one on all their customers. In an attempt to add further theatrically to their act, they incorporate a Ouija board, which opens them to big problems.

Ouija: Origin of Evil.came about as a result of the financial success of its predecessor, but considering the poor reception that the first movie had; it grossed over $100 million at the global box office despite earning a 6% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. As a result, Flanagan was essentially given carte blanche to do whatever he wanted with the film. With that newfound freedom and a desire to make something interesting, they turned in a movie that holds an 83% rating and a “Certified Fresh” distinction.

“When they first approached me for it, they opened from a place, (Ouija 2014) did incredibly well financially, which makes a sequel inedible and because we have the chance to do a sequel, we would really like to acknowledge up front that there’s a lot about the movie that didn’t work and that’d we like to fix and I thought that was very unusual in Hollywood,” Flanagan previously revealed to Den of Geek. “It was a great way to start because typically I have a pretty strict allergy to sequels and reboots in general and I don’t like to walk down the path of working on a movie that I feel like I can’t improve upon. But with this, because they said we don’t want to just do a smash and grab, we really want to try and make it its own thing and we want to try and reclaim the franchise and make good on the potential of the concept. I think everyone agreed that building a franchise around a Ouija board could be really cool and it had a lot of different directions it could go that are all exciting.”

You can watch Ouija: Origin of Evil on Netflix right now, and when you’re done there’s a ton of other Mike Flanagan joints to enjoy including Gerald’s Game, HUSH, The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, and Midnight Mass.