'Ouija' Trailer: When You Talk To The Dead, The Dead Talk Back

We were just talking about board games being made into movies, and now here's the trailer for Ouija. The horror film is based on Hasbro's "spirit board" game, which allows people to interact with spirits via a board marked with letters, numbers, and words like "yes" and "no," and a small planchette which is "guided" by spirits to spell out statements on the board. And while you may be surprised by this story concept, when someone in the film uses a Ouija board, they get in touch with something that turns out to be dangerous. Watch the Ouija trailer below.

Ouija wasn't actually a toy company invention. The board works based on the concept of "automatic writing," which goes back centuries, and the board really works thanks to involuntary (and sometimes voluntary) responses on the part of the users, which help move the planchette around. The first actual "Ouija board" was marketed in the late 1800s — for years it was mostly just a parlor game. The boards had been around for a few decades before becoming strongly linked with the occult. At this point, there's a good chance that anyone who has spent time in church in the US as a child has been warned away from the dangerous Ouija board.

The trailer itself sells a movie that seems to have a whole lot of familiar horror film concepts bundled into one, and they'll all have your Sunday School teachers shaking their heads in rueful understanding that their warnings were all correct.

Ouija opens on October 24.

In Ouija, a group of friends must confront their most terrifying fears when they awaken the dark powers of an ancient spirit board. Stiles White directs the supernatural thriller that is produced by Platinum Dunes partners Michael Bay, Andrew Form and Brad Fuller (The Purge, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th) alongside Blumhouse Productions' Jason Blum (Paranormal Activity and Insidious series, The Purge), Bennett Schneir (Battleship) and Hasbro. Juliet Snowden and Stiles White wrote the script for Ouija, and Universal will distribute the film worldwide.