Ouija
One would have thought that Battleship would have cured anyone of the idea that you can turn a board game into a compelling film, but if The LEGO Movie could turn building blocks into an inspired modern fable then….. No, Ouija would still be a bad idea.
But to play Devil’s advocate (heh), should it really be so hard to make an enticing horror movie based on the titular game? Ouija’s been around in one form or another for over 100 years, it’s been used to write books, been the subject of scientific study, and been burned alongside Harry Potter books as recruitment tools that lead to witchcraft and demon possession. Somewhere, in the midst of all that, has to be some kind of great story, but whatever it is, I doubt it has anything to do with another group of pretty suburban teens fumbling blindly in a mysterious so obvious, Scooby Doo could solve it with both eyes shut.
Also, if you want you’re scary movie to be successful, make it scary. For instance, I’m not sure what horrible dental incident led co-writer/director Stiles White to fear the simple act of flossing, but it’s something he may want to work out with a professional and not with studio budget. But at least those death scenes were memorable, how the rest of our hapless teen heroes get expunge is a knowledge you don’t really retain, like the characters’ names and what they look like. In a toy commercial, you want the kids playing the game to be forgettable enough that you think about how you, yourself, might enjoy playing the game. In a movie though, you want to invest in a character. The problem with Ouija is that it can’t decide what it wants to be: movie or toy commercial.