Ouija: Origin of Evil is a 2016 American supernatural horror film directed and edited by Mike Flanagan and written by Flanagan and Jeff Howard. The film is a prequel to the 2014 film Ouija and stars Elizabeth Reaser, Lulu Wilson, Annalise Basso, and Henry Thomas. A widow and her family introduce a Ouija board into their phony seance business, thereby inviting a spirit that possesses the youngest daughter.
Ouija: Origin of Evil was theatrically released in the United States on October 21, 2016, by Universal Pictures, and in the Philippines on October 26, 2016, by Columbia Pictures. The film grossed over $81 million worldwide and received positive reviews from critics, with many praising it as a significant improvement over its predecessor.
Plot[]
In 1967 Los Angeles, a young widow named Alice Zander works out of her suburban home as a spiritual medium, accompanied by her daughters, 15-year-old Paulina "Lina" and 9-year-old Doris. The family is reeling over the recent death of Roger, Alice's husband and the kids' father. Alice incorporates a Ouija board into her readings and unknowingly contacts a spirit named Marcus that begins to possess Doris.
Alice receives notice that the bank intends to foreclose on their home. Doris contacts the board for help, believing she is communicating with her dead father. The spirit leads her to a secret compartment in the basement wall containing a pouch of cash. When she gives the money to her mother, the family has a Ouija session. When the board answers a question only Roger would know the answer to, a thrilled Alice begins believing that they are in contact with him.
Soon, Doris becomes fully possessed by the spirit. Lina, disturbed by the changes in her sister, finds papers written by Doris in fluent Polish, a language she does not know, and brings them to Father Tom Hogan, her school principal. Troubled, Father Tom visits them for a Ouija session under the pretense of contacting his dead wife Gloria. He later explains to them that Doris did not contact Gloria. Instead, for every question he asked, she read his thoughts and repeated the answers he was thinking in his mind. The pages are entries written by a Polish immigrant named Marcus, who was taken captive during World War II by a sadistic doctor who conducted experiments on him and other captives in the house's basement. These spirits have been watching the family since the day they moved in.
Doris kills Lina's new boyfriend Mikey when he comes to visit. Father Tom, Alice, and Lina burn the Ouija board; Father Tom finds the secret room where the experiments were conducted, and is possessed by the spirits, only to be killed later by Doris. Alice is captured, while Roger's spirit carries an unconscious Lina to her bed. Recalling earlier when her doll's mouth was stitched shut by her father's spirit "to shut out the voices" for Doris, Lina realizes she must sew Doris' mouth shut to quiet the spirits' voices. She sews Doris' mouth shut but kills Doris in the process.
Doris wakes up as a ghost and is happily reunited with her father. The spirits possess Lina and stab Alice. Alice tells Lina that it was not her fault before dying, leaving Lina devastated. Lina is committed in a mental hospital for the suspected murder of her mother and disappearance of her sister. Alone in her room, she creates a Ouija board on the floor with her blood and tries to summon Doris but summons an evil spirit in Doris' form instead.
In a post-credits scene, 47 years later in 2014, a now elderly and still institutionalized Lina receives a visit from someone claiming to be her niece.