Nerdly » ‘Ouija Castle’ VOD Review

26th Sep2025

‘Ouija Castle’ VOD Review

by Phil Wheat

Stars: Adam Barnett, Mya Brown, Benedict Clarke, Charlotte Jackson Coleman, Lora Hristova, Lila Lasso, Sophie Rankin, Kate Sandison, Danielle Scott, Zhana Soltani, Chrissie Wunna | Written by Jasmine Ebony Thomas | Directed by Louisa Warren

The latest fairytale horror from director Louisa Warren and her Champdog Films production company – something of a follow-up to Cinderella’s Curse, Ouija Castle started out life as Sleeping Beauty Massacre before being retitled – undoubtedly for fear of being the subject of litigation. Our maybe to fool people into connecting it with the myriad of other “Ouija” movies that have NOTHING to do with each other. Either way, knowing that this should have been a Sleeping Beauty movie actually helps fill in some of the blanks in the script early doors!

Following the death of King Alexander, the once-thriving kingdom slips into chaos as Queen Primrose (Charlotte Jackson Coleman) takes the throne. The queen, distrustful of her own daughter, Princess Thalia, fearing she could challenge her rule, strikes a deal with Queen Velma. However, Queen Velma has her own motivations – forcing Prince Edison to marry her daughters, Princess Sofia to unite the kingdoms and rule them herself… Velma is beholden to a dark master and uses a grotesque ouija board to conjure a dark enchantment that traps Thalia in an endless slumber. See told you this was Sleeping Beauty!

Eventually, after being raped in her sleep one too many times by servant Leyland (Adam Barnett) – who may or may not be the father of the babies our sleepy heroine is carrying, even in slumber – Princess Thalia awakens and that gets Queen Velma REALLY mad. So mad that she kidnaps Thalia, takes her babies from her and uses them in a blood ritual alongside her daughter, Princess Sofia. But where’s Prince Edison in all this, you may ask? Well, he’s swanned off looking for his sister, who we know – thanks to a grisly prologue – has already died at the hands of the evil Velma… And before you ask, Velma, despite being the powerful queen of a kingdom, is merely just the wicked queen from Sleeping Beauty if she lived in her evil witch persona!

You have to hand it to director Louisa Warren and the film’s writer Jasmine Ebony Thomas; they really do not shy away from subject matter that would put off most filmmakers. It feels like Ouija Castle is harkening back to another era – the days when horror really shocked and disgusted. This is exploitation filmmaking at its best – those people who’ve only ever watched mainstream big-budget horror will no doubt be appalled by what they see here. But horror fans? They should seek this out, even more so given that it – honestly – takes Warren’s particular brand of filmmaking into a higher echelon.

Speaking of a “particular brand of filmmaking”, when you sit down to watch low-budget British genre films (especially from the likes of Proportion/Jagged Edge and Champdog), you come to expect a few things – a lot of time spent on characters talking rather than any action. And special effects created with, typically, bad CGI (and only bad because there’s no budget for them). Yet Ouija Castle belies those expectations, both in the way the horror starts from the get-go, with the story told in tandem with the introduction of the cast of characters, and the focus on PRACTICAL effects rather than CGI. For yes, this film features superb, and gloriously over-the-top, gore effects – hacking at flesh with hooks and knives, carving out intestines with an axe, smashing faces in, cannibalism, skinning, this film has it all(!) – and most are done with practical effects rather than CGI, adding a truly grisly edge to this particular fairytale fear flick. If anything, the gore is the real highlight of this film, which is – honestly – bloody refreshing (pun intended). It’s bout time we had more filmmakers producing horror films that feature gore-for-gore’s sake… besides the Terrifier franchise that is!

Things build to an eventual crescendo as, desperate for revenge, Princess Thalia strikes a deal with the same demon Velma has been working with for vengeance against Velma, her daughter and pretty much anyone who gets in her way; leading to a finale that – had the film kept its original moniker – would have REALLY lived up to the title!

Ultimately, Ouija Castle is a far cry from Louisa Warren’s early work, showing how far she has come as a filmmaker and proves, that with a decent budget and a solid premise, she can turn out a film far better than most of the films we’ve had recently that took public domain fairytales and former children’s properties and turned them into horror movies – including those from the Pooh-niverse!