Revenge of the Ouija Board

Remember all those sleepovers you went to in elementary school and junior high where you played the Ouija board with your friends and attempted seances and chanted "Light as a feather, stiff as a board" and tried to lift people off of the ground with just two fingers and whatnot?  And then when none of it worked you convinced each other that the Ouija board was silly and that seances were dumb... but then couldn't help but wonder if maybe you should've tried to lift Susie instead of Jenny.

Seriously, though, in my case, when I played the Ouija board in fifth grade and it failed to state that I would marry Chachi in the future, there was no doubt in my mind that the whole thing was a sham. Now that I'm an adult, I'm of course thankful to have had no part in Scott Baio is 46... and Pregnant, but I guess that's neither here nor there.  What I'm trying to say is that two decades have passed since I last thought about the Ouija board, and now it's suddenly back in the limelight and is clearly seeking vengeance against the Gen X and Y'ers who dismissed its prophecies all those years ago.

First, the mysterious lettered board played a supporting role in the breakout hit of the year, Paranormal Activity.  But that was just the beginning. In the near future it's going to get the front-and-center treatment in an Ouija board movie produced by Transformers' Michael Bay.  We've alluded to this project when discussing the childhood game adaptation trend in posts about the Monopoly, Candy Land and Asteroids movies, but now we've got a few more concrete details.  Tron Legacy writers Eddy Kitsis and Adam Horowitz have signed on to pen Ouija's screenplay, and so far the word is that they're going for a "supernatural action-adventure" revolving around the rules for the using the board, such as "never use it alone," "never use it in a graveyard," and "always move the pointer to Good Bye at the end."  You know some fool in the movie isn't going to obey these rules, and will therefore be doomed to come face-to-face with gruesome demon-spirit-ghosties. 

As much as I've boo-hooed the other game adaptations, I feel kind of hopeful about this one. That's probably because Kitsis and Horowitz are writers and executive producers on my favorite TV show, Lost, and so I have great faith in their abilities. I mean, it has to be better than 1986's Witchboard, right? (Yes, that's none other than Whitesnake video vixen Tawny Kitaen in the trailer below...) 

Comments

[Rebecca]

Hmm, sounds a little too much like "Jumanji" to me.

[Aly]

LOL!
Oh, the Ouiji board! We used to play that as kids.. and some people were so freaked out just doing that much. A year or two ago I played with some college friends.. It really is sad how people are still scared of that game. A movie COULD make it scarier and cool- but that's because it's a movie. I'd watch it if it got decent reviews!