Ouija Shark (2020)

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

What’s more scary than a great white shark? How about the levitating growling ghost of one? It’s as silly as it sounds, yet still manages to be kind of entertaining. Don’t rationalize. Just sit back and enjoy it.

Synopsis

Jill gets out of the car, but her friends aren’t there yet. She goes walking down a trail to the beach. She gets in the water briefly, but gets creeped out and leaves. She finds a wooden Ouija board floating in the water. Her friends finally call, and she takes the board along with her.

A group of four friends go to a house; one of them is house-sitting and got the okay for guests. Jill shows up, and the whole group heads back to the pool. Meanwhile, Tiffany takes her shirt off and helps wash some guy’s car in a music montage. Okay, she’s wearing a bathing suit, but that car is really clean now!

The girls eventually get bored of bouncing around in the poo and settle down to play Ouija on Jill’s new-found board. They put their hands on the pointer and ask questions. “How did you die?” One asks. “HUNGRY” it responds. “Where are you from?” “HUNGRY,” it answers again. Suddenly, we get a vision of a shark. They all get up to do other things. That night, Jill calls her dad and tells him everything.

The next day, a couple goes to the same beach where Jill was earlier. They see a shark. Or a ghost. Or a ghost shark! The shark growls and chases the guy through the woods. Later, a girl back at the pool offers the shark a hit of her joint, but the shark eats her.

Jill’s dad does research on spirit sharks. “Why would anyone want to summon a shark?” he asks. Then he deals out some tarot cards, so he knows this is all really serious.

A couple of cops start looking for the missing girl. The shark kills one cop inside a building. Then it eats Jen and Tiffany out in the woods and Donna near the pool. Jill’s dad goes to a psychic, but the shark finds him.

Jill goes back to her car, dresses in badass leather, and grabs a shotgun. A hooded figure approaches and explains that he was the one who put the shark’s spirit in the board. He thinks she might be able to use the board to send the shark back to Hell. The figure vanishes.

The second cop goes looking around out in the woods, and he’s next to be chased. Both Jill and the cop shoot at the shark, but that doesn’t slow it down. Jill’s dad talks to Jill through the Ouija board.

Jill’s dead dad fights the dead shark. They’re both ghosts, so now Dad can use his occult training, just like a low-budget Dr. Strange. They fight, and there’s an explosion in the sky. Jill shoots the Ouija board, and the shark vanishes.

Jill and the cop leave, safe, but the hooded figure shows up. He calls the President of the United States and reports to the orange MAGA man that the experiment was a success and can soon go worldwide. The President says “This is gonna be YUGE!” and cackles in laughter.

Commentary

“Oujia” is a relatively new and popular horror franchise. Anything with “Shark” in the title sells. So naturally, someone had the bright idea to combine the two. It must’ve worked, after all, we watched it.

The cinematography, pacing, and music were all very good here. The acting was… appropriate for the material, but I won’t say it was great.

The shark animation is just ridiculously bad, but this time, it’s so bad as to be funny. I could be wrong, but I think it was just a double-exposed hand puppet.

We laughed several times during this one. It’s really, really, dumb, but it was a fun kinda dumb.