Film

“P-L-E-A-S-E ... D-E-L-E-T-E ... m-Y ... B-r-O-W-S-E-r... H-i-S-T-O-r-Y.”

Movie miracle

How bad was 2014’s Ouija? It was so piss poor and forgettable that I had to actually look into my archives for a review to confirm I had actually seen the damn thing. I wasn’t sure.

As it turns out, I did see the movie, and I crushed it with my lowest rating, proclaiming the following: “The PG-13 outing consists of fake-outs and people behind doors, the kind of stuff you will see coming if you’ve seen, say, one horror movie in your lifetime. If that is in fact true, don’t make this your second one, for you will wind up massively disappointed.”

In short, Ouija was a deplorable shitshow.

Ouija: Origin of Evil is a bona fide movie miracle in many ways. Ouija was awful, but it was enough of a hit to warrant a sequel. Still, it shocked me to see the sequel had actually made it to movie screens rather than some direct-to-digital platform. The fact that Mike Flanagan, the director of the crappy Oculus, was at the helm did little to quash my skepticism.

After about 30 seconds of watching young Lulu Wilson as Doris Zander, I realized that Flanagan might to be onto something with this casting. This kid, with her authentic 1960s haircut and mature-for-her-years delivery, crafts one of the great horror film performances of all time. Yes, I’m bestowing that honor on a performance that occurs in a sequel to one of the worst horror films ever made.

The film, set convincingly in 1965, follows right along with Wilson as truly inspired and creepy. Is it one of the best horror films ever made? No. A few missteps in the final act take it down a notch. Is it one of the best horror sequels ever made? You bet it is.

Doris is the daughter of Alice (Elizabeth Reaser) and sister of Lina (Annalise Basso). Lina is the younger version of a character played by

Lin Shaye in the original movie. The house in which they reside is the same house where the girl hung herself in Ouija. The whole thing, as the title implies, is an origin story. We find out how a Ouija board winds up in the house, and more about the spirits corresponding through the board. After a couple of nice conversations with her dead dad, Doris winds up in conference with a rather nasty spirit, who possesses her and causes her face and eyes to do nightmarish things. Huge props to the special effects department for creating some of the best horrific contorting tricks since the girl from The Grudge did her wacky crawling all over that townhouse. Flanagan captures lightning in a bottle with this ensemble, which also includes Henry Thomas taking the standard horror film priest role and making it something deeper and more complicated. Thomas hasn’t Ouija: been this good since E.T. This is not a dig on him, because he’s Origin of Evil always quite good. It’s just a way of saying he really hits this one out 12345 Director: Mike Flanagan Starring: Lulu Wilson, Elisabeth Reaser of the park. As the anchor of the film, Basso is excellent as the young girl trying to fall in love with a boy while her sister goes bananas and her mother stumbles a tad with the parenting thing. Make sure to stay after the credits to see a scene that’s crucial in connecting the two Ouija films together. Flanagan proves he can make a horror film that is scary, multi-dimensional, and effectively authentic. His ability to stage a convincing late ’60s setting shows he also has a visual talent that can take him beyond the horror genre. Most importantly, he’s quite the expert at delivering solid, core-punching scares. The horror genre has been resurgent the last couple of years. That said, nobody in their right mind could’ve expected something this good here, considering the crap pedigree going in. Ouija: Origin of Evil, in a year littered with many predictable disappointments, is one of 2016’s great surprises. Ω

3The Accountant This plays out like a deranged Batmanwith-a-calculator action flick. Ben Affleck plays Christian Wolff, a high functioning autistic man who has managed to harness his extreme intelligence with numbers and physical tics down into the strangest of professions. By day, he’s your average accountant helping a farm owner find tax loopholes to save a few thousand bucks. At night, he’s some sort of accountant ninja who can take out a room full of mob guys with a dinner knife and some totally Batman forearm blasts to the face. Christian takes jobs laundering books for dirty folks all over the world and, while he does have a modest, sparsely decorated home, he also has a mobile man cave—or, should I say, Batcave— that keeps all the spoils of his riches—money, gold, Jackson Pollock paintings and, yes, collector’s items like Batman comic books. During one job, trying to find missing money for a prosthetics company led by John Lithgow, he takes a liking to fellow accountant Dana (the invaluable Anna Kendrick), and they conspire to find the missing money, which, of course, wasn’t really supposed to happen. Maybe I’m the only one who sees this movie as Batman doing taxes. Maybe that makes me some sort of amateurish idiot who likes movies that are actually a little on the bad side just because they play out in a weird way in his overreaching mind. If so, I say “Hooray!” to that. My ability to make a movie something else in my head means I have a better chance of making my movie ticket money well spent instead of blown dollars, like the money I blew on that TheGirl ontheTrainpiece of shit.

3Deepwater Horizon I think my shockingly lustrous eyelashes got singed watching DeepwaterHorizon, director Peter Berg’s harrowing account of the worst oil rig disaster in American history. That’s because Berg’s film drops the viewer into a situation where fire and explosions are so realistic, you can feel the heat and disorientation of the 2010 disaster, which claimed the lives of 11 men and led to an oil spill eclipsing all other oil spills. Mark Wahlberg is first-rate as Mike Williams, a man who was actually on the rig at the time of the disaster. Kurt Russell equals his power as Jimmy Harrell, who questions the integrity of the rig, and then proceeds to have the worst shower in cinema history since Janet Leigh had a showdown with Anthony Perkins. Berg puts his film together so that the mere sight of mud oozing from a pipe is terrifying. When the stages of the disaster go into high gear, it’s as scary as any horror film to hit screens this year.

3In a Valley of Violence Horror fans know director Ti West for his cult classic horror film Houseofthe Devil, and the horror films V/H/S, TheInnkeepersand TheSacrament. His latest, starring Ethan Hawke and John Travolta, is a major departure from his usual projects, a capable, full-on homage to Sergio Leone Westerns. Hawke plays Paul, a drifter who finds himself in a frontier ghost town with a few remaining inhabitants. He and his dog immediately get into some trouble with Gilly (James Ransome), the son of the town marshal (Travolta). Bad things transpire—this is sort of John Wick set in the old wild West—and Paul sets out for revenge. The resultant gunfights are nicely staged, accentuated by good work from Hawke, Travolta and Ransome. While Hawke is always reliable these days, Travolta’s film career has been on a bit of a downslide (one of a few his career has endured). His performance here as a semicrooked lawman with a small streak of decency is actually funny at times, and consists of his best work in a film in over five years. (He was also quite good as Robert Shapiro in The Peoplev.O.J.Simpson:AmericanCrimeStory.) The film’s biggest surprise is Taissa Farmiga, providing solid comic relief as a fast-talking hotel operator. West does admirable work on the Western playground. The movie doesn’t feel all that original or groundbreaking, but it does look good, has some solid acting, mixing in some nice, dark humor for an overall good time. (Available for rent through iTunes, On Demand and Amazon.com during a limited theatrical release.)

3The Magnificent Seven Director Antoine Fuqua’s remake of TheMagnificentSeven, which was itself a remake of SevenSamurai, has enough in common with the Yul Brynner/Steve McQueen film to make it feel like a retelling of the classic story. It also contains enough departures to make it feel like a fresh take rather than just a rehash. The Mexican bandits led by Eli Wallach are replaced by an evil, land-stealing company led by Bartholomew Bogue. As played by Peter Sarsgaard, Bogue is a memorable villain who makes the skin crawl. He rolls into a mining town, kills a bunch of good hard-working people, and winds up getting the group in the movie’s title on his ass. Let the spectacular gunfights commence! Fuqua’s pal Denzel Washington—they did TheEqualizerand TrainingDaytogether—is first-rate as Chisolm, basically Brynner’s role from the 1960 classic. When the wife of one of the deceased (Haley Bennett) comes looking for help and mentioning Bogue’s name, Chisolm flies into calm, collected and most certainly valiant action. He enlists six other men to visit the town and prepare the townspeople for the fight of their lives.

1Mascots Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Director Christopher Guest, who hasn’t made a movie in nearly a decade, returns with what is easily his worst. His usual acting corps (minus Eugene Levy) takes a crack at the world of mascots, and I can’t think of a dumber subject for a comedy. Much of the movie is performers in full mascot suits in a competition doing routines that have nothing to them and eat up the running time. There’s a laugh every now and then, but mostly groans, and the subject matter just doesn’t call for a full movie. Parker Posey has the film’s biggest laugh after eating bad sushi, and it’s not a very big laugh, so that’s not saying much. In what amounts to a truly desperate move, Guest cameos as his WaitingforGuffman character, Corky. His presence in that persona simply reminds us that this once funny guy is now straining for laughs, Mel Brooks style. His improvisatory style has worked before on better subjects (community theater, pet shows, folk music), but this one certainly suggests that he has run out of ideas. In many ways, it actually rips off BestinShow, his pet competition movie. This is a tremendous waste of everybody’s time, and needs to be removed from Netflix to make room for more shitty Adam Sandler movies. (Available for streaming as a Netflix original.)

1Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children Holy hell, is this film a boring mess. Tim Burton directs a leaden Asa Butterfield in this adaptation of the Ransom Riggs novel. The movie is sloppy, as if the special effects weren’t completed. The story is convoluted, as if the filmmakers thought hiring a big time art director and costuming department were a fair swap for a good script. The narrative involves some nonsense regarding mutant children in a house in the ’40s that’s stuck in a time loop. The house is led by Miss Peregrine (Eva Green, the only good thing about the movie), and visited by young Jake (Butterfield), who heard about the place from his late grandfather (Terrence Stamp). The kids all have “peculiarities” but no personality. They are X-Men with no sense of purpose. Butterfield, a normally reliable young actor, decimates nearly every line he utters in this film. Burton stresses the visuals, as usual, but without a strong lead like Johnny Depp or Michael Keaton, Burton is a lost cause. This will hang tough as one of the year’s biggest disappointments. Samuel L. Jackson does show up, but even he can’t save this thing.