Horror Movie Review: Ouija Death Trap (2014)

Ouija Death Trap aka Spirits is a found-footage paranormal horror movie from director Todd Sheets, who also holds a writing credit alongside Amanda Payton and Johnnie Reed. It stars William Christopher Epperson, Jessica Hopkins, Dakota Lassen, Raven Reed, and John O’Hara.

Ouija Death Trap is an embarrassment of a film and proof, even in 2014 when it was first released, that the found-footage genre had lost any semblance of originality. A film that makes no effort to do anything new or interesting and fails to bring a spark to any of the tiresome tropes it utilises.

It’s story, and it’s not much of a story at all, sees four high school students sneaking into the haunted locale of ShadowView Manor. There, they hope to capture some paranormal activity on camera, but make the mistake of messing with a Ouija board. It turns out that ghosts are real, and cameras become glued to faces.

If you think that sounds incredibly basic, you’ve not seen this film, because that summation makes it sound way more interesting than it is. The story is awful, simply because it is cut and paste paranormal nonsense. It’s also a story where every single beat is predictable, leading to a finale that is laughably bad.

All of this is made worse by characters that have no characteristics about them, acting that alternates between the awkward and the unreal, scares that would make a toddler yawn, and tired trope after tired trope. You could make a drinking game out of the number of cliches this film hits, and you’d be wasted by the halfway point. Maybe, if you’re lucky, wasted enough that this almost becomes entertaining.

It’s not worth the liver damage though nor is it worth the anger that is felt as it drags on and drags on. If you somehow make it to the point where the group have been assailed by a ghost (girl in white dress with long dark hair – never seen that before) and have run for their life. Only for one of them insist that they need to go to the toilet and must go into a dark and quiet bathroom alone. Then you’re an absolute trooper. It might be the dumbest moment in the film, but that bar is set extremely low considering the flimsy reason they even end up in this place.

If, like me, you’ll give anything a go in the hope that you will be surprised and find a hidden gem, you’re going to have serious remorse over this one. Ouija Death Trap isn’t even badly made, it’s just so basic, it outright offends. The lack of effort put in is worse than a high school film project filmed on phones. At least those sort of people try.

It’s a terrible movie. One of the worst found footage movies this site has had the misfortune of reviewing. Every second of it is wasted time.