Stiles White’s directorial debut, "Ouija", is a supernatural horror film that became a box office hit. The movie revolves around the eponymous game played on an Ouija board, starring Olivia Cooke, Daren Kagasoff, Douglas Smith, and Bianca A. Santos.
If you're wondering about its unique ending, here's a quick explanation.
The Sinister Plot Unfolds
The plot revolves around two best friends, Debbie Galardi and Laine Morris, as their lives take a sinister turn when their childish mistake becomes their worst nightmare. "Ouija" begins with a childhood flashback and switches back to the present day, where Debbie throws away the board but begins to experience weird things.
Later, Debbie is shown to be possessed by some evil spirit and commits suicide by hanging herself. Debbie’s sudden death shocks everyone, especially Laine, who is heartbroken and becomes anxious to seek the truth behind her mysterious demise. She convinces her group of friends, including her boyfriend Trevor, sister Sarah, Isabelle, and Pete.
They all gather at Debbie’s house to communicate with her dead spirit, but strange things distract everyone, and they all break the rules of the game. The first one was unwittingly playing in a graveyard, as Debbie’s house is built on one. And they ran away without saying goodbye, thus breaking another rule.
Read also: Cultural impact of the Ouija board
In a series of tragic events, different friends are killed one by one, with only the major characters remaining as they fight back against the odds.
In the opening scene, two young girls, named Laine and Debbie, are sitting in Laine's room playing with a Ouija board. Debbie tells Laine how to play and how to use the planchette to see any spirits. They say the mantra, "As friends we gathered, hearts are true; spirits near, we call to you." Laine looks through the planchette to spot a spirit and is frightened when she sees someone, only it's her younger sister Sarah. She yells at Sarah to leave.
In the present day, the adult Debbie (Shelley Hennig) is playing with the Ouija board by herself. She appears distressed, and she tosses the board and planchette into the furnace. She then speaks on the phone with the adult Laine (Olivia Cooke). Laine goes over to her house, and Debbie says she is not up to hanging out with her and their friends that night. Debbie mentions playing the Ouija board and feeling odd, though Laine dismisses this as her being a spaz. After Laine leaves, Debbie goes back upstairs and sees the Ouija board and planchette on her bed. She looks through the planchette, and her eyes turn white. Debbie then grabs some Christmas lights and hangs herself.
The next morning, Laine is with her boyfriend Trevor (Daren Kagasoff) at a diner. They are met by their waitress friend Isabelle (Bianca A. Santos). Laine gets a text from her dad saying to go home immediately. When she gets there, Laine finds her dad, her grandmother, and Sarah (Ana Coto) gathered to inform her of what happened to Debbie.
All of Debbie's loved ones gather for the wake. Laine is too shaken to be there, but she holds it together. Debbie's boyfriend Pete (Douglas Smith) arrives with some flowers. Laine goes into Debbie's room where Debbie's mother finds her. Laine breaks down and hugs her. She asks Laine to housesit for them while they are gone. Laine agrees.
Read also: Enigmatic Ouija Board
Laine discovers the Ouija board that Debbie was playing with. Since she cannot shake the feeling that Debbie's presence is still in the house, she gathers Sarah, Trevor, Pete, and Isabelle to Debbie's house to play with the board. They get together and say the mantra as they put their hands together on the planchette. It starts to move, which everyone thinks is Sarah moving it. The spirit implies that it is Debbie and it spells out "Hi Friend" on the board. The friends are freaked out and stop playing.
Each friend is followed by the spirit. Trevor encounters it on a bike ride, leading him under a bridge where he sees "Hi Friend" written on the wall in chalk. Isabelle sees it spelled out in her car window, along with a hand slamming against it. Pete sees it carved in his desk.
Thinking that Debbie is trying to communicate with them, the friends get together to play the board again. They learn that the spirit is not Debbie, but someone that identifies as DZ. Laine looks through the planchette and sees a little girl with stitches on her mouth. The spirit then spells out on the board, "Run. She's coming." Laine asks who is coming, and the spirit spells "Mother." Laine looks through the planchette and sees the girl point to an older female spirit screaming and running in her direction.
In her home, Isabelle is flossing her teeth and drawing herself a bath. She then has stitches form on her mouth, and she is levitated in the air. The spirit drops her, leaving her to slam her head against the sink, killing her.
Trevor is angry at Laine because she made them play the game, which led to Isabelle's death. Laine investigates Debbie's house and finds some pictures of two little girls and their mother. Trevor looks up on the internet an article on a missing girl from the same address as Debbie's home, as well as the girl's sister being taken into custody after murdering her mother.
Read also: Enigmatic Ouija Board
Laine goes to a mental asylum to meet Paulina Zander (Lin Shaye), the sister of Doris, the girl with the stitches on her mouth. She tells Laine that their mother believed she heard voices and saw spirits that were trying to communicate through Doris, so she sewed her mouth shut. Paulina asks Laine to find Doris's body in the house and to cut the stitches open.
Laine finds Doris's corpse in Debbie's home, with her mouth still sewed shut. She cuts the stitches open, bringing Doris's spirit out, along with Mother. Doris lets out a blood-curdling scream and vanquishes Mother's spirit.
Just when it seems that everything is over...IT'S NOT. Pete gets killed in his home by Doris's spirit. Laine returns to the asylum to tell Paulina that she did what she told her. Paulina smiles and says Doris is now totally free, and Laine realizes with horror that she lied and Doris's mother had been trying to stop the girls from causing harm with the spirits, which had taken over their lives. Pauline begins yelling that Laine will hear the voices too and is taken away by medics.
Laine's grandmother tells Laine and Sarah that the only way to defeat the spirit is the destroy not only the Ouija board, but Doris's corpse.
The girls and Trevor go to Debbie's house to finish this. Trevor gets pulled into the pool and is killed by Doris. Sarah finds Doris's corpse and is attacked by her spirit. Laine gets out the Ouija board and beckons Doris to play with her. Doris grabs Laine's arm and almost kills her, until Debbie's spirit shows up to intervene. Sarah brings Doris's corpse and throws it into the furnace. Laine throws the Ouija board and planchette, and Doris's spirit is destroyed.
Laine and Sarah return home, relieved that everything is over. Laine flosses her teeth and gets ready for bed, and then finds the planchette on her desk.
The History of the Ouija Board
Who Survives the Evil Spirit in Ouija?
The surprise ending reveals that Doris is the evil spirit and is the reason why everyone in the group was brutally killed. In the end, both Laine and Sarah team up to battle against the demonic Doris as they follow their grandmother’s advice to defeat Doris by burning her dead body along with the board game.
After a series of cat-and-mouse chases, the sisters emerge victorious as they stop Doris by burning her and the board before the clock runs out and possesses them. The ending also features Debbie’s ghost helping her best friend Laine and Sarah defeat Doris.
Laine and Sarah return home, relieved that everything is over. Laine flosses her teeth and gets ready for bed, and then finds the planchette on her desk.
The Confusing Ending and Post-Credit Scene
However, "Ouija" had a confusing ending as it did not offer much closure to a lot of points, including the scene where Laine watches the planchette. Even Doris’ backstory or the rules weren’t given much screen time.
In a post-credit scene, Laine is shocked to find the planchette back at her home after it was burned by her. Later, she holds it and looks through it as the movie ends on a cliffhanger, and viewers are left wondering if she saw something evil or not.
How Does Doris’ Sister Betray Laine?
The climax showcases Laine and Pete digging up the mysterious past of Debbie’s house. Their research reveals that a family used to live there in the past, and the young daughter named Doris Zander went missing. However, her elder sister is currently in a psychiatric hospital and is the sole survivor of that family.
She reveals to Laine that in order to get over this deadly game, they need to find Doris’ dead body, which is hidden in a chamber, and unstitch her sewed mouth while fighting her mother’s evil spirit.
Despite Doris' mother's protests, they proceed, as per the elder Zander sibling. Things take a horrific turn when Pete is possessed and killed.
Ouija: Origin of Evil
"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.
The film grossed over $81 million worldwide and received positive reviews from critics, with many praising it as a significant improvement over its predecessor.
Set in 1967 Los Angeles, a widow named Alice Zander works out of her suburban home as a fake 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 children's father.
After Alice receives notice of foreclosure on their home, Doris contacts the board for help, believing she is communicating with her dead father. The spirit leads Doris 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.
Soon, Doris becomes fully possessed by the spirit, and she throws tantrums when told she must go to school, since she wants to remain home with the Ouija board. 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 Nazi 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 possesses and kills Lina's new boyfriend Mikey when he comes to visit. Father Tom, Alice, and Lina burn the Ouija board in the basement furnace (a short time later, they find it untouched upstairs on its table). Beside the furnace, 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.
Doris wakes up as a ghost and is happily reunited with her father. The spirits possess Lina, who stabs Alice, who tells Lina with her dying breaths that it was not Lina's fault, leaving Lina devastated and orphaned.
Lina is admitted into a mental hospital for the suspected murder of her mother and disappearance of her sister.
Although the first film in the Ouija series was a success commercially, it was not well received by critics.
Flanagan also watched such horror classics as "The Exorcist" and "The Watcher in the Woods".