Oculus

This is a classic ghost story.

I won't spoil anything, but for a haunted mirror movie, I found it VERY effective.

There are only really 6 people in the film. The parents, and the children at 2 different ages. The film is not really linear, and it took me a while to get the flow of the constant changing from today and yesterday. Once I got it, I found it very clever.

What impressed me the most, however, is that there is hardly any blood, no nudity, no profanity, no sex, no gore and it scared the crap out of me!

No, it doesn't reinvent the genre (can you even really do that with the haunted mirror genre?), but it is a well crafted, well acted movie that really kept my interest all the way through.

The young girl was especially effective.

The film starts off slow and methodical and really hits its stride about the half way mark.

We need more films like this. Smart, clever "little" films - a few characters, a few props and lots of chills and thrills.

Please see this!

8/10

A while ago I reluctantly accepted that we will probably never see a truly groundbreaking horror movie again. A film that is both truly cinematic and gut-wrenchingly horrifying. Hollywood has just become to commercialized, too calculated, and to conveyor belt-like in its approach to horror. Everything is summer blockbuster, Oscar season, and the crap that comes out January-March. Horror has become a get-rich- quick investment for producers. Invest small, obtain profit 10-fold.

But once in a while, a horror film gives us a glimmer of hope. Not redemption, but a little window of light from someone who almost gets it. And the skunkworks group from the Saw-Insidious-The Conjuring clan are to thank for that. They're latest work, Oculus, is the story of a brother and sister who obtain a mirror from their childhood that (they think) was responsible for the possession and murder of their parents. They rig their childhood home with cameras and lights, and wait for the proof that the mirror is possessed to get captured on camera.

Oculus is properly scary and, once you get past the awkward first 20 minutes, has a wonderfully progressive nature to it. Too many "horror" film nowadays deliver an uneven stream of gut-punches in the form of BOOM scares and disfigured faces. Oculus relies on an unsettling tonality, and a quantum state of uncertainty, making it a much more effective scare. The colors and set design is vintage Gothic horror, and the majority of the film is flashback driven which is was a very creative storytelling method and integrates perfectly with the story. And there's a scene or two that were so intense, I was making noises like I was lowering myself into scalding water, and fighting the intrinsic urge to turn my head.

My frustrations are centered on the beginning and the end. The first 20 minutes of the film, which set the story in place, is the only part of Oculus that takes place outside the house. It feels tacked on, ham-fisted in its delivery and lacks narrative, especially against the rest of the film. And given the flashback-heavy story, I believe the setting of the story could've been built into the flashbacks, strengthing the narrative and setting the whole film inside the house, which would make the film feel terrifyingly claustrophobic. And about the ending... It's just clichéd, predicable, abrupt and leaves too many questions unanswered.

Oculus isn't the last word in horror or quality, but it's scary as hell and it does what so few horror films do nowadays; it dissolves the world around you and makes you buy into a ridiculous story. The weak narrative gets a little long in the tooth around the third act, and I was left wondering if the script was ever going to reveal anything worth discovering. And ultimately it doesn't. Much like the never-ending winter we've had, we've had so many lackluster horror films lately, that when an average film comes along it feels like a gift.

21 year old Tim Russell is released from a mental institution.That same week his older sister is able to get a few days alone with the Lesser mirror. Kaylie, the sister, decides to take the mirror back to their old house, where unspeakable horrors unfolded during their childhood shortly after they moved to the back-then-new-house, and their father bought the infamous mirror. Kaylie is convinced the mirror is haunted: the mirror being some sort of evil supernatural being. Tim, on the other hand, has grown completely skeptic about the supernatural aspect of the mirror, believing his sister only holds on to that notion simply to have a way to cope with the horrific events of their childhood. Needless to say, the mirror does seem haunted, and as the night progresses for the adult siblings, the door to those memories open up, revealing more and more those events which both are trying to move on from; albeit in very different ways. These two timelines (their childhood and their present-day adult selves) unfold in a parallel manner, with the ending of the film culminating the two timelines' climaxes together.

One of the things the film gets right is the acting. Both Karen Gillian and Brenton Thwaites do a very decent job in portraying the adult version of the siblings. Their children counterparts also do an impressive work in portraying two small, terrified brother and sister with no one to turn to for help, slowly accepting the fact that they are both alone against the mirror.

The second good thing about it is the staging of the story. Although the concept is nothing new or original, the execution of such concept is both new and original. This injects a healthy dose of re-freshens and also a decent amount of unexpectedness to the film. Both helping in making this horror film one in which the audiences are actually engaged and interested in what will happen next, and at the same time they can have fun in the direction the story advances to.

A neutral element in it is the way they decided to unfold both story-lines (past and present). Like mentioned above, both of them move forward hand-in-hand, with various parallels presenting themselves in the way of flashbacks from both siblings. While this works wonderfully in the first half of the film, the second half of it loses a good chunk of the excitement which this sort of narrative added to the first half. That is not to say however, that it hurts it, but by the ending it just feels it needed to continue this way to explain what had happened, rather than using it to strengthen the present events.

More personally speaking, the ending felt rather frustrating and just almost unimaginative. While the final events fit into the pattern of what the mirror does, it feels like it should have had a more surprising ending due to the excellent build-up the film provides in the first two-thirds. The moment when the final twist happens, it is shocking, with everything falling into place seconds later, only to add more shock to what happens. However, moments later the feeling of shock is quickly replaced by one of been-there-done-that, leaving the audience feeling that there should have been more to it, rather than it being so simple and straight-forward.

If you are expecting an explanation for what the mirror really is, what entity it holds, or how it came to be, you will be disappointed. If you are rather more interested in the how (instead of the why's or what's of the mirror) you will feel more satisfied. The focus of the film is in tricking its characters, and along with them the audience as well. The story is very effective in messing with one's psyche, making one actually wonder what is actually happening to the characters, and what is fake and just a product of the mirror.

Overall, adjust your expectations into knowing that this film is good, but it does not redefine the genre in the slightest. It does feel refreshing, but other than in its execution, there is nothing new to see here. The movie is fun and unexpected (something very few recent horror movies can say), so with everything else, it is definitely an enjoyable ride as a whole.

This film was fantastic. I was creeped out the entire time, right from the introduction of the mirror. There has always been something slightly disconcerting about staring into a mirror at night, half expecting someone to jump out from over your shoulder. This film captured the essence of this perfectly. There was not a lot of action, not much blood or violence, but just enough to scare the audience. Just when you think that you have the mirror figured out, something else comes around to make you think otherwise. It makes you wonder if the characters are just crazy, that none of the film is actually real. You will never know exactly what is going on. That is what made it such a well done horror film, backed up by great acting performances from both adults and children. If you enjoy horror films as I do, go to see this film, you will not be disappointed!

When her younger brother is finally released from a psychiatric facility years after his conviction for the murder of their parents, a woman seeks to prove the existence of the malignant and supernatural force she believes actually responsible. Conveniently, the locale of said force is a mirror and therefore easily transportable back to the family home-come-erstwhile crime scene.

Playing out less like the haunted house story one might expect from the outline above, this interesting take on psychological horror initially subverts expectations by presenting us with a brave and capable heroine with a well thought out (though necessarily flawed) plan. Writer and Director Mark Flanagan who later made the derivative and lacklustre Hush (2016)* and valiantly attempted the 'unfilmable' Stephen King adaptation Gerald's Game (2017), has made female protagonists with agency a feature of his work.**

There is some real artistry in the way Oculus employs the storytelling technique of constantly shifting between flashback and present day. Over and above using this device as a clever short cut to character development, it is in the moments where past and present seemingly overlap that the viewer receives the most vivid portrayal of the characters' fraying mental state.

Yet it is perhaps these intriguing elements which become the film's worst enemy. In allowing these glimpses into the mind of the characters, there are hints of a rich vein of storytelling left unplundered and therefore 'setup' without payoff. Rather than leaving us wanting more, the untapped potential of Oculus has the unintended effect of relegating it toward mediocrity.

Oculus is not without gore nor jump scares and most fans of the horror genre will therefore find it serviceable. Yet in setting up something truly unique and promising a subversion of the genre, there is the abiding feeling that the film lacks the courage of its convictions.

* Specifically derivative of the excellent Wait Until Dark (1967). ** Deaf and Mute or handcuffed to a bed though they may be.