Tracing back to 1944, where the ouija board had its first feature in the horror film, ‘The Uninvited’, many films like ‘Seance: The Summoning’ and ‘The Ouija Experiment’ have used this strange device to create horrifying stories that have left spiritualists fascinated by the deep history behind it.

Inviting audiences once again into the mystery of the spirit board, ‘Ouija: Origin of Evil’ presents a new tale that puts viewers at the edge of their seat.

Set in 1967, fifty years before the first film ‘Ouija’ (2014), the story is told from the perspective of Lina Zanders (Annalise Basso) who is the eldest daughter of Alice Zanders (Elizabeth Reaser).

Alice and her two daughters, Doris (Lulu Wilson) and Lina earn their income by performing fake seances. As Lina and Doris hide in the background and make special effects with the nifty gadgets they’ve rigged their house with, Alice “comforts” A.K.A. scares the grief-stricken customers.

As the film progresses, the silly excitement dies down and the plot begins to turn darker and darker.

One day, Lina suggests that her mother should purchase an ouija board and consider using it in her fake seances. At this point in the film, we learn the three main rules that should never be broken: Don’t play alone, don’t play in a graveyard, and always say goodbye. Of course, all three of these rules end up being broken.

Doris is the one to break the first rule of the board and contacts a spirit alone. To add some more emphasis, Father Tom calls Alice the next morning to tell her that Doris turned in homework written in cursive even though she was never taught it.

The Zanders are surprisingly calm when Doris comments that she is able to contact her deceased father, Roger through the board. When the board answers a question that Roger only knows the answer to, Alice is convinced that they are contacting his spirit, and uses Doris to continue speaking with him.

Lina is unconvinced, and her doubts are confirmed when Doris becomes possessed by a shadowy figure. Alice however, is oblivious to this and doesn’t understand the real reason why Doris has become a wifi hotspot for deceased spirits.

At this point, all hell breaks loose because all these people are dying unexpectedly from supernatural forces and Father Tom, Lina, and Alice discovers a stack of skeletons in the cellar that have been left behind by some mad evil scientist in the cellar. Everyone realizes that they’ve been playing with the board in a graveyard all this time, effectively breaking another one of the board’s rules.

The movie ends with Lina gruesomely sewing Doris’ mouth closed, while crying then stabbing her mother to death.

In a post credits scene, Lina, now an elderly woman lives in an asylum and receives a visit from someone claiming to be her niece.

Although the film was wonderfully gruesome, when comparing the first film ‘Ouija’ with this prequel, the plots don’t connect with each other.