Review: Ouija Room

Text © Richard Gary / Indie Horror Films, 2019

Images from the Internet

Ouija Room (aka Haunting Inside)

Directed by Henrique Couto

New Dynamic Pictures

78 minutes, 2019

www.facebook.com/hauntinginside/

www.henflix.com

The indie filming scene around Dayton, Ohio, is not to be ignored. There is a core of directors and actors that overlap into a powerful and quite interesting clique of artists, such as Henrique Couto and Erin R. Ryan, among others.

For this release, director Couto has assembled some of his regulars and also new talent to release a demonic tale involving a Ouija board and the requisite evil spirits.

Joni Durian

The center of the film is troubled Sylvia (lovely Joni Durian), who has several mental ailing, such as ADHD, agoraphobia (fear of leaving the house), OCD and seems to be somewhere on the autistic spectrum. Durian does a strong job playing a wide range of emotions right from the first scene, which is off-putting until the viewer realizes pretty quickly that she’s not just quirky, but rather disturbed.

Her guardianship is in the hands of her brother Sammy (Couto’s go-to actor John Hambrick), who obviously cares for her, but is on the brink. He buys board games that she likes to play solo and watches whatever Sylvia wants to see on television (but no indication of a computer or cell phone for her). He also does his best to stop her from self-destructive behavior and tries to help her focus on a task. He’s getting to the point of burning out and drinking too much. Sammy’s girlfriend is Rebecca (Ryan), who often comes to visit and is a seemingly calming influence and supportive of Sammy’s taking care of Sylvia.

Among the stack of games Sammy misguidedly brings home from a comic store, of course, is said Ouija board. If there’s a Ouija and it’s on-screen, you know trouble and malevolent forces are not far behind; especially when the dissonant note music starts on the soundtrack when the board is introduced. Just so you know, I am not giving anything away here, this is the basic set-up to the action in the first few minutes of the film.

John Hambrick

Sylvia is obsessed with two things: games of any sort and a desire to make friends (she feels like those she watches on television are “friends” in the same way we believe that people we don’t really know or have met on social media are “friends”). And it is these two things that Sylvia’s trio of spirits of the Ouija board manipulate for their own purposes.

The title of the film is a bit of a double entendre because Sylvia is house bound by her OCD fears of going outside since her parents died, and the much-desired friends/spirits are also within the domicile. The second meaning for quite a while is that the trio may actually be inside her mind as well. For example, the board’s planchette moves in extremely fast circles, but she is still able to “read” it (without the audience having to watch everything tediously spelled out). This is a nice touch that enhances the complexity of the story, and of Sylvia’s mind; she’s not stupid, just troubled with mental illness.

It’s understandable that Sylvia is attracted to these spirits: they appear caring, tell her truthful dark secrets about others in a blunt manner, and keep reminding her that they are all in the middle of playing “a game.” The purpose of said game is the question the audience will be asking, though it comes across as obvious very soon (hey, it’s a relatively short – but perfect length – film).

Couto seems to do well avoiding clichés, but he does have his tropes. As in many of his films, one of the main characters is a struggling writer. Perhaps this is Couto’s own real-life haunting inside (note that this film was written by Dan Wilder, but certainly Couto had some influences on the story).

Dorian’s acting style can be quite jarring here, as she shows the audience Sylvia’s brain trying to process the information of what is happening around her. It took a couple of minutes to get into the vibe of it until her situation is understood, so it works well. Her moments of lucidity under the guidance of the spirits becomes the oddity, which works really well. Most of the rest of the cast is pretty good in their performances; the spirits can be a bit over the top in the acting department here and there, but in the long run it all works together.

Erin R. Ryan

These spirits, wisely, are very different from not only the principal characters, but among themselves. Also, they are different from most other demons (I’m assuming) you would expect from this sub-genre. They are a little girl obviously played by an adult (Alia Gabrielle Eckhardt), a wise-acre wiseguy gambler in a sharp suit who also helps Sylvia with recipes in the kitchen (Joe Kidd), and a punk rocker who wears her hair in a distracting Misfits’ front rattail style (Rachael Redolfi). As I said, Couto does not usually dwell in the house of cliché.

While most of the cast is attractive, there is no nudity or sex, a low body count per se, and little bloody visceral material, but the story easily holds the attention of the viewer anyway as this really is character based more than SFX. That being said, there are some beautifully shot sequences that are effectively unnerving, such as Sammy’s recurring dreams about Sylvia’s future.

If you’re looking for knives and gore, there are other Couto films to check out, such as Babysitter Massacre (2013), but this is, as I said, story- and character-based, and I say it’s all the better for it.