Only Mike Flanagan Could Make a Quality Prequel to a Bad Horror Movie

The Big Picture

Once upon a creepy time, Mike Flanagan wasn’t interested in making a horror sequel. The writer-director of the original spine-chilling features Absentia, Oculus, Hush, and Before I Wake described himself to Esquire in 2016 as “[having] an allergy to sequels and remakes in general.” Ouija, a 2014 movie from Universal Pictures, scored poorly with critics but turned an impressive enough profit to warrant a sequel (a worldwide gross of $103 million against a budget of just $5 million). Faced with a creative dilemma, Universal executives, collaborating with Jason Blum of Blumhouse Productions (which had co-produced Flanagan’s Oculus), sought a filmmaker who could improve Ouija‘s missteps. Despite Mike Flanagan’s disinterest, Blum promised him near-complete freedom on the project. What resulted was Ouija: Origin of Evil, Flanagan’s fifth feature film and his first with a major studio. Free of limitations, Flanagan crafted a period piece strong enough to exist independently of its maligned predecessor. Frankly, it’s almost unfair — if not unsurprising — just how good Ouija: Origin of Evil is. It has no right to be. Critical consensus agreed: compared to Ouija‘s Rotten Tomatoes score of a measly 5%, Origin of Evil sits prettily at 84%. Leave it to Mike Flanagan to concoct a miracle out of a “prequel-as-sequel” to a terrible movie.

In 1967, a widowed mother and her daughters add a new stunt to bolster their seance scam business by inviting an evil presence into their home, not realizing how dangerous it is.

What Is ‘Ouija: Origin of Evil’ About?

Ouija: Origin of Evil succeeds where Ouija fails through filmmaking principles that happen to be Mike Flanagan’s strengths: his knack for rich, intriguing character work, building atmosphere through the edit, and bridging psychological horror with the supernatural. Flanagan’s in top form here: his primary cast consists of Elizabeth Reaser as Alice Zander and Annalise Basso and Lulu Wilson as her two daughters, Lina and Doris, respectively. The three women run a séance scam to make money after Alice’s husband/the girls’ father died in a car accident. The business, such as it is, isn’t malicious. A grieving individual wants to communicate with a lost loved one, the Zanders activate the hidden rigged effects, and the individual leaves more healed than when they arrived. Even if their down-pat routine makes Alice uncomfortable, there’s only so much a widowed single mother can do in 1967. The money vanishes so fast when you’re feeding, clothing, and sending two daughters to school and contending with a foreclosed house.

So when Lina plays with a Ouija board during a party, Alice begrudgingly incorporates the board into their smoke and mirrors show. Immediately, 9-year-old Doris hears voices. She thinks it’s her father; viewers know differently. The Zanders’ house isn’t haunted by just one clingy ghost but by dozens of tortured souls. A Nazi doctor conducted experiments and buried his victims’ skeletons in the basement walls. The trapped souls hear everything that happens in the Zanders’ house — as do the malevolent entities who possess Alice. Even the school’s kindly priest Father Thomas (Henry Thomas) can’t help with that doozy.

Mike Flanagan Made ‘Ouija: Origin of Evil’ Entirely His Own

While promoting Ouija: Origin of Evil, Flanagan praised Universal and Jason Blum for their lack of interference. “The connections to the first movie weren’t as important to them as making a good movie,” he told Esquire. “If we hadn’t had that conversation right off the bat, I wouldn’t have pursued it at all. It was really kind of freeing, to step into a franchise without having to play by the rules that are established by the first picture.” That same year, Flanagan told Den of Geek, “I think Blum’s instincts are right-on in allowing somebody to come up with an amazing vision for the film before they get started, rather than saying ‘This is what our marketing department suggests.”

One of Flanagan’s creative stipulations for this prequel sequel was the period setting. To hone his focus, he took inspiration and based his approach on classics like The Exorcist and The Changeling. Cinematographer Michael Fimognari filmed with “antique lenses” and used in-camera zooms instead of Steadicams or dolly shots. In the editing bay, they mimicked a 1960s film reel’s visual imperfections and audio cues. Origin of Evil even opens with the classic Universal Pictures logo and a superimposed title card. With this film, “I wanted to recreate the feeling I had when I first discovered horror movies,” Flanagan revealed. In Origin of Evil, Mike Flanagan embraces his haunted house/demonic possession roots, but this time he’s backed by concentrated experience rather than a talented amateur’s instincts.

‘Ouija: Origin of Evil’ Has Everything That Makes Mike Flanagan Great

In less intuitive hands, such a loving pastiche might’ve lacked narrative structure. Ouija: Origin of Evil doesn’t lose the forest for the trees. It plays the vintage style straight without overwhelming to the point of distraction. Touches like the lived-in production design and warm-toned color grading enhance the film’s mood and give it a distinct identity. Looking at 21st-century horror, the movie shares sensibilities with The Conjuring as much as The Exorcist: ensuring audiences care about the imperiled characters as people and not as bodies primed for voyeuristic victimization. Creating quality characters was a principle Flanagan took especially seriously on Origin of Evil: “In its most basic expression, genre can just take archetypal characters, throw them in the woods, and kill them one at a time,” he said. “But it can’t make you care.”

What’s especially enjoyable about Origin of Evil is how, like most of his work, Mike Flanagan centers women protagonists at the story’s heart. A 9-year-old, a 15-year-old, and a 40-something each grieve in different ways while approaching adult concerns as realistic as providing for a household and teenage experiences as universal as a first crush. Flanagan “really wanted to make a movie about a single mother and with three dynamic female leads.” He passes the proverbial test with flying colors. Alice, Lina, and Doris are all layered characters. Flanagan ensures this by lingering on moments like Alice silently calculating their slim finances and Lina’s breathless joy after her first kiss. Cruel classmates mock Doris’ old uniform skirt, but she doesn’t hold their low income against her mother. Lina sneaks out to party, drink, and flirt but she and Alice discuss matters a teenager shouldn’t have to grapple with. The Zanders’ situation is sympathetic beyond reproach without being pitying. During the dramatic finale, little details like Alice’s smeared mascara say as much as a character’s gut-wrenching sobs. Just like sacred horror textbooks like The Exorcist, Mike Flanagan prioritizing character before genre makes the audience’s empathy for the Zanders more potent and the characters’ fractured relationships more impactful.

Origin of Evil‘s PG-13 rating required that the normally gore-heavy Flanagan convey his scares with restraint. It was a welcome challenge. He told Esquire, “Gravity always kind of pulls me toward the more extreme side of things, so it’s nice to check yourself and say, ‘I want to go for maximum impact, but I’m going to need to accomplish that just with atmosphere and timing, instead of shock and gore.” Origin of Evil doesn’t need blood and guts to be effective. The way Flanagan navigates around the rating’s limitations harkens back to the inventiveness of classic horror films like Psycho, and the nastier moments evoke infamously “was the MPA asleep to label this a PG?” movies like Poltergeist (another film Flanagan studied for Origin of Evil). The worst violence is psychological — Doris’ all-white eyes, a mouth sewn shut with flesh, a gooey black figure shoving its entire arm down Doris’ screaming mouth. The visuals are startling for their inherent wrongness. However, even understated Mike Flanagan violence has a purpose. Every unsettling moment erects scaffolding to support Origin of Evil‘s tragic “rocks fall, almost everyone dies” ending, and Flanagan pulls astonishingly realistic emotion from his performers.

Ouija: Origin of Evil marked a shift in Mike Flanagan’s career not in content but in funding and public awareness. The movie combined his skills (already noted in the horror community) with Universal Pictures’ resources. The same year Origin of Evil hit theaters, Netflix released Hush. The Haunting of Hill House, Flanagan’s true breakout, followed two years later. The very title Ouija: Origin of Evil reads like an incongruent one-off in Flanagan’s resume and is anything but. This prequel sequel to a very bad film was yet another banger in a history of bangers, replete with Flanagan’s trademarks that never feel stale but represent an evolving artist’s inclinations. Just like Absentia, Oculus, and The Haunting of Hill House, grief and loneliness are the true horrors at play, not a possessed girl whispering in someone’s ear. (That’s still terrifying, though.)

Ouija: Origin of Evil is available to stream on Netflix