grief – Bitch Flicks

‘Ouija: Origin of Evil’: Grief, Motherhood, and Spirit Possession

‘Ouija: Origin of Evil’ may be a prequel, but it is first and foremost a tragic character piece. One in which a previously strong family dynamic is torn apart when malicious forces use Alice’s grief to manipulate her.

This guest post written by Margaret Evans appears as part of our theme week on Women in Horror.

A common question that is asked of horror movies is why? Why don’t any of the leads think to go to the police? Why do they not stop messing around with dark forces before it is too late? Not only does Ouija: Origin of Evil have an answer to such questions, it answers them in a way that serves to make its cast more sympathetic.

Directed and co-written by Mike Flanagan, Ouija: Origin of Evil — the prequel to the 2014 film Ouija — stars Elizabeth Reaser as Alice Zander, a fake psychic who enlists her daughters in order to convince people that she can communicate with the dead. Since the death of Alice’s husband, this has become how she earns money. The film opens with Alice performing a séance with her daughters and a client. They are able to pull off the illusion, but Alice declines the customer’s money because she wants to save him from a possibly fraudulent business venture. Alice justifies lying to clients as she believes that she’s providing a service that meets their emotional needs. But her refusal here conveys that there are limits she won’t cross when it comes to dealing with her customers.

This scene serves three important functions. It establishes why the Zander family would choose to experiment with a Ouija board. Alice turns away her customer’s money, proving that she is invested in her job for more than monetary gain. Finally, it reinforces how easy it is for someone to believe that a medium can allow them to contact a deceased loved one, as many people yearn to reconnect with those they have lost.

By this point, the audience is familiar with the aspects of Alice’s character that will inform her actions for the rest of the film. She still mourns the loss of her husband. She honestly believes that her job helps people; she says as much while talking with Father Hogan (Henry Thomas), a priest at her daughters’ school. Alice is passionate about what she does and sees in herself as akin to a therapist. Because Alice is a widow, she’s in a similar position to the people who seek her help. This makes it easier for her to view her actions as helping others grieve, and not the actions of an emotional predator. She feels what they feel. Alice longs for the closure that she believes she gives others through her work.

When her younger daughter, Doris (Lulu Wilson) displays the ability to use a Ouija board for real and actually connect with spirits, it makes perfect sense that Alice jumps at the opportunity. In her eyes, she is finally able to do what she has been pretending to do all this time and make a real difference in the world. In doing so, Alice fails to see both the danger to Doris and other warning signs that suggest the spirits she speaks to aren’t who they claim to be.

When Doris first uses the Ouija board, it doesn’t appear to cause her any harm. During the course of the film, however, she displays signs that she is being possessed: she starts writing in Polish despite not speaking the language,she uses strange powers to fight back against two boys bullying her. Father Hogan notices that something is amiss, but Alice doesn’t. She is too focused on the great work she thinks her daughter is doing. Alice doesn’t even think to question the spirits beyond a basic test, as she is too wrapped up in what she thinks her daughter has to offer people. The fervor with which she encourages her daughter’s talents shines a light on Alice’s own grief. Through Doris’ gift, Alice has found a purpose for herself. She is still mourning her husband, and being able to heal the pain of others gives her something to strive for. It’s also possible that despite statements to the contrary, Alice felt guilt over lying to the people who sought her help. Now that she can genuinely contact the dead through her daughter, it would make sense for Alice to see this as a redemption of sorts — a way for her to make amends for her earlier lies.

Towards the end of the film, Alice’s older daughter, Paulina “Lina” (Annalise Basso), points out something rather alarming: the answers the ghosts have been giving are the same answers that Alice used to give clients when she pretended to commune with the dead. The ghosts have been manipulating Alice with her own con.

The film comes full circle, connecting back to the very first scene. Everything that was true of Alice’s customer in that scene is true of Alice at this point in the film. She desperately wants to believe that she is talking to the deceased, and whomever she is speaking to knows exactly what to say to get what they want from her. The difference is that these spirits don’t have Alice’s best interests in mind.

Ouija: Origin of Evil subverts the conventions of the horror genre with a sympathetic main character with a relatable motivation. The spirits tempt Alice with her heart’s desire and this keeps her invested in doing what they want, even when it becomes increasingly clear that something is wrong. Alice makes mistakes, ignoring Doris’ needs in favor of her own being chief among them. This is successfully portrayed as tragic because Alice is shown to be an otherwise good mother. She is involved in both her daughters’ lives, to the extent that she has multiple scenes with Father Hogan to discuss Doris’ well-being. When Lina brings her doubts to Alice, she is frustrated by her mother’s inability to really listen to what she is saying because she is used to her mother being more willing to listen. It was Lina who suggested incorporating the Ouija board into her mother’s act. That her mother followed this advice serves as evidence that Alice is usually willing to take Lina’s ideas. In the film’s first scene, the whole family works together to pull off the séance, showing that they normally function well together as a unit. Influenced by The Changeling (1980), Flanagan wanted to create a period piece exploring the dangers of grief within a family, as he views “family as the safest place in the world.”

Because the film takes the time to examine Alice’s motivation, these are truly mistakes and not plot holes. Instead of undermining the film, they serve to contribute to its depth of character. Ouija: Origin of Evil may be a prequel, but it is first and foremost a tragic character piece. One in which a previously strong family dynamic is torn apart when malicious forces use Alice’s grief to manipulate her.

Margaret Evans is a writer from Godalming, a small town in south England. She currently writes for Starburst Magazine and Ink Magazine.

‘One Cut, One Life’: Love, Death, and Jealousy

First person documentary filmmakers Ed Pincus and Lucia Small are no strangers to letting an audience in on their family “secrets”: Small in ‘My Father, The Genius,’ a film about her own father and their ambivalent relationship, and Pincus in ‘Diaries,’ in which he filmed both his girlfriend and wife in 1970s Cambridge, the latter–in one scene that seems to sum up the post-hippie atmosphere of the time and place–nude and playing a flute.

The following is a slightly modified repost by Ren Jender.

Artists who use their own lives as the subject matter for their art always have to make a decision about how much revelation is too much. David Rakoff, whom many know from his work on This American Life, wrote frankly and transcendentally about his declining health (including an inability in his last years to use one of his arms) after he was diagnosed with the cancer that would eventually kill him. But Rakoff didn’t have to worry that his revelations would hurt those closest to him; he lived alone, without a partner or children.

When they reveal “everything,” those artists who are in relationships aren’t just exposing their own lives to the public–they can’t help also exposing intimate details about their loved ones. Author Ayelet Waldman has received criticism for revelations about both her husband (author Michael Chabon) and her kids in her work. Sex writer and essayist Susie Bright swore off using her personal life as fodder for her work years ago and though she seems to be in a successful decades-long relationship (and sometimes collaborates with her now adult daughter), her writing doesn’t have the same spark as it did earlier in her career.

First person documentary filmmakers Ed Pincus and Lucia Small are no strangers to letting an audience in on their family “secrets”: Small in My Father, The Genius, a film about her own father and their ambivalent relationship, and Pincus in Diaries, in which he filmed both his girlfriend and wife in 1970s Cambridge, the latter–in one scene that seems to sum up the post-hippie atmosphere of the time and place–nude and playing a flute.

Near the beginning of their excellent documentary One Cut, One Life (which will be in theaters starting Wednesday, May 13), Small and Pincus, each seeming to take a turn behind the camera, discuss plans to collaborate on their final film together (they had previously worked on the post-Katrina documentary The Axe In The Attic). Ed has been diagnosed with a fatal disease which would eventually turn into leukemia. Lucia is working through her grief over the deaths of two of her close friends, one from a hit-and-run driver, the other murdered by an ex-boyfriend.

Ed, who is over 70, has other health issues (he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s some years before and speaks slowly and carefully), but they agree that they can probably work around them. The problem is Ed’s wife, Jane, who is adamant that she doesn’t want them to film what might be the last months of his life. We’re so used to wives being a drag on “great” men in film (Pauline Kael referred to this role as the “‘please don’t go up to break the sound barrier tonight, dear’ type”) that we’re ready to think of Jane as the villain until she tells us, “I have enough to deal with in my life right now. My husband has received a death sentence, and I don’t see why I have to give him over to anybody else.”

Jane, who was filmed over five years in Diaries, is familiar with the intrusion a camera is in one’s day-to-day life and has no desire to relive it. She’s also insecure about Ed’s feelings for Lucia.

Ed documented his and Jane’s open marriage in the 70s, but after Diaries was completed they moved to Vermont to run a flower farm. When they made an appearance at a screening of Diaries in the 90s, with matching glasses and grey hair, their arms around each other, they seemed to have become a more conventional couple.

In the 2000s, Ed’s introduction to Lucia reignited his interest in filmmaking (though he still kept the farm). Lucia tells us that she became close to both Ed and Jane (who was a member of the feminist health collective that wrote the original Our Bodies Ourselves) during the making of Axe, but then they, by mutual agreement, distanced themselves when the film was finished. Lucia tells us that aside from a few “flings” she hasn’t been in a relationship in years and that working together for as many hours as a film takes, mixes up her feelings of love and intimacy, though she clarifies that her relationship with Ed is platonic.

Ed seems less intent on keeping boundaries clear. He tells Lucia he loves her and at one point Jane catches them alone in a situation that sets off alarm bells for her–and like photographers in a war zone, Ed and Lucia immediately pick up their cameras and start shooting the conflict. Whenever we see Lucia talking to the camera, she looks drained; the elements in her life that might distract her from her grief instead serve as reminders. Her big, black dog originally belonged to the woman who was murdered. Her cute New York apartment was the one she shared with the woman who was killed in the hit-and-run. But when Jane looks at Lucia she sees a blonde 25 years younger than she is, whom her husband seems to adore.

Mixed up in all of this drama is Ed’s worsening health. Receiving bad news on camera he simply says, ” Well, that’s sobering.” In stunning cinematography we see the seasons at the farm: fall, winter, spring, summer and then spring again, when a newly cue-ball-bald Ed tells the camera that the doctor had said he probably wouldn’t live past March, so he’s grateful. Ed lived two seasons longer and died in November of 2013. When I saw the film last year as part of the Independent Film Festival of Boston, Small did a poignant Q & A after the screening. One of the first things she told us was Jane had chosen not to attend.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maC94kPWbQI”]

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks has appeared in The Toast, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.

‘One Cut, One Life’: Love, Death, and Jealousy

When they reveal “everything,” those artists who are in relationships aren’t just exposing their own lives to the public–they can’t help also exposing intimate details about their loved ones. Author Ayelet Waldman has received criticism for revelations about both about her husband (author Michael Chabon) and her kids in her work. Sex writer and essayist Susie Bright swore off using her personal life as fodder for her work years ago and though she seems to be in a successful decades-long relationship (and sometimes collaborates with her now adult daughter), her writing doesn’t have the same spark as it did earlier in her career.

Near the beginning of their excellent documentary One Cut, One Life (which will be shown as part of the Woods Hole Film Festival July 28), Small and Pincus, each seeming to take a turn behind the camera, discuss plans to collaborate on their final film together (they had previously worked on the post-Katrina documentary The Axe In The Attic). Ed has been diagnosed with a fatal disease which would eventually turn into leukemia. Lucia is working through her grief over the deaths of two of her close friends, one from a hit-and-run driver, the other murdered by an ex-boyfriend.

Mixed up in all of this drama is Ed’s worsening health. Receiving bad news on camera he simply says, ” Well, that’s sobering.” In stunning cinematography we see the seasons at the farm: fall, winter, spring, summer and then spring again, when a newly cue-ball-bald Ed tells the camera that the doctor had said he probably wouldn’t live past March, so he’s grateful. Ed lived two seasons longer and died this past November. When I saw the film in April as part of the Independent Film Festival of Boston, Small did a poignant Q & A after the screening. One of the first things she told us was Jane had chosen not to attend.

One Cut, One Life Trailer from Lucia Small on Vimeo.

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