‘Ouija’ Ending Explained: The Dead Are Never Truly Gone
Laine #Laine
Based on the Hasbro board game of the same name, 2014’s Ouija tells the story of a group of teenagers that accidentally establish a connection with a malignant entity while trying to contact their dead friend. With a contrived plot and numerous rules about how to strike up conversations with the spirits, the movie has a particularly confusing ending, made all the more puzzling by its purposefully dubious final shot. Was Laine (Olivia Cooke) able to see any spirits through the planchette? Was the connection to the otherworld finally severed? What was Doris’ (Sierra Hawkins) role in all this? The film has just hit Netflix, so if you’ve watched Ouija for the first time and aren’t quite sure of what to make of its ending, or if you have been obsessing about it ever since 2014, here’s a breakdown of what happens in the movie and in that befuddling final scene.
What Is ‘Ouija’ About?
Though the movie opens with a scene of little Laine (Afra Sophia Tully) and little Debbie (Claire Beale) playing Ouija in their pajamas, the story actually begins with the girls already in high school. Debbie (Shelley Hennig) is at home, alone, burning a Ouija board on the fireplace when Laine drops by to ask her to the basketball game. Debbie declines the invitation, claiming that she has to sort some things out by herself. She tries to tell Laine something about receiving weird messages through the Ouija board but eventually gives up due to her friend’s skepticism. The girls say their goodbyes, and Debbie goes back inside, where the board she just burned waits for her, intact, on her bed. The scene ends with Debbie seemingly hanging herself from the ceiling with a string of Christmas lights.
Debbie’s alleged suicide comes as a shock to all of her friends, as well as her boyfriend, Pete (Douglas Smith). Laine, in particular, can’t make sense of what happened, especially since Debbie had made plans to meet up with her the following morning. Certain that something is off, Laine decides to conduct a séance with Debbie’s Ouija board. Taking advantage of the fact that Debbie’s parents have decided to recover from their daughter’s death somewhere else, Laine invites Pete, her boyfriend Trevor (Daren Kagasoff), her friend Isabelle (Bianca A. Santos), and her sister Sarah (Ana Coto) for a quick chat with the dead at Debbie’s place. At first, things go as smoothly as they can go during a Ouija session. A spirit that they believe to be Debbie greets them as a friend and tells them that there was indeed foul play involved in her death. Pretty soon, however, things start to get weird. The lights go off on their own, and, in their rush to investigate, Laine and friends fail to realize that they have broken one of the main rules of the Ouija game: they left without saying goodbye. I mean, they tried to, but the planchette never finished its travel to the word “goodbye” at the bottom of the board. This, of course, means that they failed to cut their connection with the spirit realm, leaving unwanted presences free to roam the world of the living and follow them around.
What Happens After the First Game?
And, indeed, the lives of Laine and her friends change drastically after their first séance. The first sign that things aren’t exactly the same is the silhouette of an older woman that Pete sees in the mirror at Debbie’s house. Trying to get a better look at the ghost, Pete is pushed by an unseen force and ends up breaking the glass with his hand. But this is child’s play compared to what comes next. While going about their daily business, Laine, Pete, Trevor, Isabelle, and Sarah all see the message “Hi, friend” written somewhere near them, echoing the ghost’s greeting in the first Ouija session. Thinking that Debbie must be looking for a way to contact them, they go back to her house, board in hand, for a second séance.
RELATED: Yes, Horror Movie Tropes Are Wildly Absurd – and Absolutely Necessary
However, the spirit that greets them isn’t Debbie. It turns out they had been talking all along with someone who calls themself DZ. Using the glassy part in the middle of the planchette, Laine decides to look around for spirits and finds a young woman with her mouth sewn shut. Using the board to communicate, the ghost tells Laine and the others to run, for a sinister presence she calls Mother is coming for them. And, indeed, through the glass, Laine is able to see a woman running towards them. In a frenzy, the gang leaves Debbie’s house and, once again, tries to return to their daily lives. But the spirit isn’t content with just kicking them out of the house. Instead, it goes after poor Isabelle and claims her life. While flossing in the bathroom, Isabelle is possessed by a force and lifted up in the air. Her eyes turn white, and her mouth is sewn shut. Then, her head is thrown down against the sink. The whole scene is set up to make it look like she slipped on the bathroom’s wet floor.
Who Are the Spirits That Are After the Gang?
Laine and her friends, however, don’t buy this version of the story. Knowing full well that Isabelle was killed by an evil spirit, Laine and Pete go back to Debbie’s house to investigate. Guided by Debbie’s many video logs, they make their way to the attic, where Laine finds a box full of old paper clippings and photographs. The documents tell the story of a family that lived in Debbie’s house long before her, a mother and her two daughters, one of which went missing and was never found. Years later, the remaining daughter killed her mother and was subsequently committed to a local psychiatric hospital. Now an elderly woman, Paulina Zander (Lin Shaye) might be the key to solving the mystery of Mother and DZ.
And so Laine sets off to investigate a bit further. Claiming to be Paulina’s niece, she makes her way into the hospital for an illuminating conversation. The story Paulina tells her is the following: long ago, her mother (Claudia Katz Minnick) used to conduct séances using her sister, Doris, as a vessel for the dead to speak through. Eventually, though, the constant exposure to the otherworld became too much for Ms. Zander, and she lost her mind. Blaming her daughter for her own spiritual distress, she sowed Doris’ mouth shut, killed her, and hid her body in a secret room in the basement. In order to avenge her sister’s death and make sure that she wouldn’t be next, Paulina had no choice but to take her mother’s life. Now, however, the spirits of Doris and Ms. Zander are trapped in the house, with the evil Mother as the dominant force. The only way to stop her reign of terror is to open up Doris’ mouth so that she can finally tell mommy off.
What Is the Truth Behind Doris and the Ouija Board?
After Laine’s interview with Paulina, the gang goes back to Debbie’s house to find Doris’ body and unsew her mouth. Mother tries to stop them, locking doors and throwing them around, but Laine and Sarah are able to reach the body and release Doris from her prison. With a potent scream, the young girl banishes the spirit of her mother to God knows where, and everything goes back to normal. Right? No, nothing goes back to normal. Not a day later, Pete dies under the same circumstances as Debbie and Isabelle, and Laine goes back to the asylum to ask Paulina what they did wrong. But, according to Paulina’s standards, the kids did everything right. It turns out that Doris was indeed an evil child, possessed by a myriad of spirits, and that Mother killed her in order to protect others from her. However, the ghost of Doris has been haunting Paulina, promising her the most wondrous things and prompting her sister to help release her.
Shocked and panicking, Laine runs to her grandmother for help. Nona (Vivis Colombetti) had seen the Ouija board in her granddaughter’s room and warned Laine not to play with the spirits. Thus, Laine believes that Nona might have the answer to their problems. And, indeed, Nona comes up with a pretty straightforward, albeit tricky, solution: they must destroy the board as well as Doris’ body to finally sever the connection between worlds. After all, since the game of Ouija was played over a burial ground – something that the manufacturers of the game do not recommend – it isn’t just the board that serves as a conduit for the spirits. Following Nona’s advice, Laine, Trevor, and Sarah go back to Debbie’s to destroy Doris’ body. Now free from her restraints, Doris is almost able to stop them, even killing Trevor in the process. However, with the help of Debbie’s spirit, Laine and Sarah manage to overpower her and throw her body into a furnace alongside the board and the planchette.
Was the Connection With the Spirit Realm Truly Severed?
Back home, however, Sarah raises an important question: if Doris was merely a conduit for numerous other spirits, what happens to those souls now that her body was destroyed? At first, Laine doesn’t pay much mind to her sister, but, as she enters her room, she finds the Ouija planchette waiting for her, completely intact. She looks through the glass, searching for spirits, but we are never shown what she sees. The camera zooms in on her glass-covered eye and the credits roll.
There is no way of knowing for certain whether Laine saw any ghosts through the planchette. The movie’s ending is purposefully dubious. However, this doesn’t mean we can’t make an educated guess. Since the planchette came back from the fire much like the board did at the beginning of the film, it sure seems like the connection hasn’t been completely severed, though it might be a little weakened. Furthermore, as Nona points out, it isn’t enough to burn just one or two conduits if the spirit is still connected to some other material object. Thus, if the spirits living inside Doris were also tethered to other things, it is quite possible that they are still roaming around. Last, but not least, in the first scene of the movie, little Laine explains the rules of Ouija to Debbie. Over the course of the film, she and her friends break all of those rules: they play the game alone, over a graveyard of sorts, and they leave without properly saying goodbye. So, even if Doris is gone, the doors to the realm of the dead aren’t entirely closed. The film never received a direct sequel, but Mike Flanagan’s 2016 prequel entitled Ouija: Origin of Evil goes back and follows the story of Doris, her sister, and her mother.