10 Years Ago Today: Mike Flanagan Directed One Of The Best Horror Prequels Ever Made

Before the rise of his scary streaming empire, Mike Flanagan was the director of 2016's "Ouija: Origin of Evil." Sure, by that point, the artist had already begun making a name for himself with festival favorites like "Oculus" and "Hush," but his horror movies had yet to fully register on the radar of mainstream audiences. That changed after "Origin of Evil" debuted in theaters exactly 10 years ago on October 21, giving him his first proper taste of broad success. And yes, before you ask, Flanagan hates that title as well.

The irony was, nobody really expected "Origin of Evil" to amount to much of anything. While the first "Ouija" movie had climbed past the $100 million mark at the box office in 2014, few people seemed to actually like it, and it had all but been forgotten by the time its prequel rolled around. (Fun fact: Then-future "House of the Dragon" and "Slow Horses" veteran Olivia Cooke plays one of the unsuspecting youths who meddles with wicked supernatural forces by using the titular ouija board in the film.) And though Flanagan's involvement with "Origin of Evil" boded well, there was always the risk he'd been tasked with doing little more than a for-hire job.

But lo and behold, "Origin of Evil" was the real deal, winning the favor of critics and becoming yet another lucrative low-budget investment for Blumhouse. It's not just a Flanagan horror movie in name, either. Revisiting the prequel 10 years later, you can readily pick out what have since become his most widely-known themes, narrative elements, and imagery as a storyteller. It also, of course, includes several members of his recurring actor troupe, along with a certain expert in the art of playing things that prefer to go bump in the night.

Taking place in the late 1960s (almost 50 years before the first "Ouija" film), "Ouija: Origin of Evil" centers on Alice Zander (Elizabeth Reaser), a phony spiritual medium and widowed single mother who decides to add a Ouija board to her readings. (Spoiler: This proves to be a terrible idea.) Right away, you can see how the movie fits in with Mike Flanagan's other well-regarded works about troubled families reeling from tragedy, perhaps most notably the first season of his "Haunting" anthology show, "The Haunting of Hill House" (which co-stars Reaser).

The parallels run deeper than that. Like the settings in each season of Flanagan's "Haunting" series, the Zander household is home to distressing secrets, both figuratively and in the sense that there are hidden physical spaces where all manner of horrors once occurred. The past and the scars it leaves (including actual ghosts formed by pain and anger) is another Flanagan trope at play in "Origin of Evil," as is the visual of pallid, lanky spirits. Flanagan and his crew even restrict themselves to using the filmmaking tech and tricks that were either available or fashionable in the '60s to further immerse you in the movie's world. (If you dug the throwback vibe of the split diopter shots in "Lee Cronin's The Mummy" and "The End of Oak Street" earlier this year, you'll want to keep your eyes peeled here.)

Add in the sturdy performances by some of Flanagan's frequent collaborators (among them Henry Thomas, Lulu Wilson, Annalise Basso, and, again, Reaser), plus Doug Jones doing his "Doug Jones plays a fantasy creature" thing, and you've got a horror prequel that's anything but a cynical cash grab. Its title still makes no sense, but hey, nobody's perfect.