Hallowatch 2026 No. 24: Long Time Dead (2002)
I'm pretty sure the only reason I have a copy of this is Lukas Haas is in it. This is easily the most bog-standard scary movie on the list; here's a synopsis, stop me if you've heard this one before:
A group a teenagers want to party and do drugs; during this bacchanalia, one mentions the best buzz he's ever heard of was from doing a Ouija board. They make a ouija board out of scraps of paper (letters, numbers, yes/no) and an upturned glass as a planchette. This unleashes an evil spirit who kills them one by one; also one of the teenagers has a secret history that ties him to the evil spirit. The End, No Moral.
It's not a terrible One of Those. It does elect to do a weird orientalism thing by making the evil spirit a djinn, which I am going to blame on ambient post-9/11 psychosis.
The effects have aged terribly; the "snake eyes" of the djinn made me chuckle every time they showed up. But the acting is not too shoddy, the sets are real, and the directing and pacing is competent. Some of the parts on the boat were really effective tension building.
This might be the single most skippable entry in the Hallowatch just because it's truly a paint-by-numbers; that said, it did not fill me with a sense of resentment towards it (like, say, The Evil Bong) nor did it overexplain (like, say, Gothika); it trusted its viewer and wasn't just cheap jumpscares (unlike, say, The Nun); and it had a coherent plot (unlike, say, The Card Player). If you want to watch the median scary movie, I'd wager that this is it. Dead center.
Rewatch? I'm good. Sequel? Truly, I'm good. Remake? Sure. Do something interesting this time. ■
