As Halloween emerges, the popularity of horror movies also, unsurprisingly, tends to increase. One of the main reasons horror movies are so easy to churn out is the fact that they’re inexpensive, typically don’t require extensive post-production, and the audience appeal they normally possess is quite large. However, there’s a fine line between simplistic filmmaking and just purely lazy filmmaking, and Ouija is a perfect example of lazy filmmaking.

The film made about a modest $20 million this past weekend and that’s only because of its seasonal time of release and its enthusiastic target demographic of teenagers. Clearly, word of mouth or critical acclaim is not what caused its minor success. The film revolves around a group of friends who use a Ouija board to contact their dead friend who, supposedly, commits suicide in the opening scene. From then on out, it’s simply goes downhill as a profusion of laughably atrocious occurrences plunge this film into oblivion.

If there’s anything about the film that isn’t utterly terrible, it’s the overall look. It’s a sleek looking picture and there are a few intriguing ideas introduced, but other than that, it’s nothing but awful. The performances are all devilishly undercooked and the script is just as weak. By the finale, the film has completely fallen apart and lost any sort of cohesion it may have maintained prior due to an immensely forced, detrimental twist.

All of this could have been forgiven if the film managed to be even remotely scary. It almost entirely relies on audible jump scares as its main source of terror, but never manages to produce as much as a jolt. At some points it does attempt to smartly focus genuine visual horror, but quickly reverts to just aimlessly launching loud noises in hopes to land a scare.

To the film’s credit, it is based off of a board game, but that’s no excuse for such a lethargic, pitiful horror movie. A majority of horror films are incompetently made, and finding a gem within such a sea of nonsense is a tough task. Ouija is definitely not one of those gems.