Ouija: Origin of Evil: ‘My creepy young star is one to watch in Hollywood’

Horror filmmaker Mike Flanagan is convinced the young star of his new movie Ouija: Origin of Evil is going to be a big name, because she was spellbinding to direct.
Little Lulu Wilson plays possessed Doris Zander in the upcoming film and Flanagan, who also discovered Room star Jacob Tremblay, admits he struck gold when she walked into an audition.
“She was quite the discovery,” he tells LatinoReview.com. “I knew when we were writing that Doris was going to be very tough to cast. We were asking a ton of a very young actor. She has to carry so much of this movie and show a range that’s difficult for grown-ups to achieve.
“She came in and auditioned… Her audition piece was a monologue that happens about halfway through the movie, where she talks about what it feels like to be strangled, and it’s a very disturbing monologue, so a lot of kids coming in made the obvious choice of how to perform it, which was to read these creepy words in a very creepy way,” he said. Lulu came in and read it very casually, very nonchalantly with a little smile on her face, like she was just telling you what she did at school that day.”
“It was such a sophisticated choice and showed a complexity that was frankly beyond her years, to approach a scene that way… I don’t think she changed a single note on that monologue between her audition and what is in the movie. I didn’t even cut away from her in the film. She did it all in one unbroken take, and I don’t even edit away… She was just that compelling on her own, so I think we’re going to be seeing an awful lot of Lulu as she gets older and keeps working and that makes me very happy, just as a moviegoer, because I think she’s just an extraordinary talent.”
Flanagan’s new movie opens in America on Friday (21Oct16) and is expected to become this year’s big Halloween hit at the box office.