Terrible horror movies are always going to get sequels regardless of whether or not they take a pasting from critics and/or audiences, because at the end of the day it’s all about the profit margins. Laughing in the face of its five percent Rotten Tomatoes score, Ouija made a killing at the box office.
Hasbro’s decision to turn the supernatural plaything into a potential franchise looked to be living up to its creatively bankrupt origins after director Stiles White’s universally-panned tale of terror earned upwards of $100 million from theaters against a minuscule budget reported to be as low as $5 million.
It was a truly heinous feature that deserved the trouncing it got, so eyes were rolled when the inevitable follow-up was announced… until Mike Flanagan was named as director. Regarded as one of horror’s brightest lights for a reason, Ouija: Origin of Evil easily ranks among the biggest upgrades ever.
Certified Fresh on the aggregation site with an impressive 84 percent rating, the levels of acclaim between Ouija‘s first and second chapters jumped by a not-inconsiderable (to put it lightly) 1580 percent, even if Origin of Evil fell short of its forebear in multiplexes by tens of millions of dollars.
With spooky season upon as, revisiting the opener does not come recommended, but the sophomore stint of playing with the cursed titular object most definitely does. Max subscribers have taken that sentiment and run with it, anyway, seeing as FlixPatrol has revealed Origin of Evil to be the second most-watched feature on the platform’s global charts.