Directed by: Mike Flanagan.
Written by: Mike Flanagan & Jeff Howard based on a short screenplay by Flanagan & Jeff Seidman.
Starring: Karen Gillan (Kaylie Russell), Brenton Thwaites (Tim Russell), Katee Sackhoff (Marie Russell), Rory Cochrane (Alan Russell), Annalise Basso (Young Kaylie), Garrett Ryan (Young Tim), James Lafferty (Michael Dumont), Miguel Sandoval (Dr. Shawn Graham).
I
will fully admit that the premise of Oculus sounds ridiculous. This is a movie
where a young man, Tim (Brenton Thwaites) gets released from a mental
institution after 10 years because of trauma suffered as an 11 year old, and
immediately goes to see his sister – who suffered through the same events, but
didn’t have to go to an institute. She immediately tells him that she has found
“it” – and that the next day, they’re going to get their revenge. “It” turns
out to a supposedly haunted mirror – one that drove their parents crazy, and
winded up with both of them dead. But Kaylie (Karen Gillan) has a plan – she
knows what she needs to do to get rid of whatever is inside that mirror. But
Tim is skeptical – he once believed that the mirror was haunted, but after so
long inside, he has been convinced that what he remembered isn’t true – just
one of his delusions, and now he’s cured. But what if they weren’t delusions
after all? The movie flashes back and forth in time – to those months when
Kaylie and Tim were children and their parents (Katee Sackhoff and Rory
Cochrane) slowly go crazy, and the long night Kaylie and Tim try to get rid of
whatever is inside that mirror – inside the same house the previous events took
place in. Yes, the premise is ridiculous – even by horror movie standards. A
haunted mirror? Really? Especially since nothing ever seems to come out of that
mirror. Whatever presence there is in the mirror remains invisible – but what
it can others see, hear and do is terrifying. Yet, as is so often the case in
horror movies, almost any premise can be made to work if the execution is done
right. And the execution in Oculus is done right.
What
is strange about Oculus, from a horror movie stand point, is that the movie
doesn’t rely on the usual tricks of other horror movies. The movie is almost
completely lacking in blood and gore – the body count is remarkably low for a
film in this genre. Nor does the movie really rely on typical “BOO” moments –
you know the ones I mean, where something from outside the frame that is
invisible to the audience, but should be visible to the characters, but somehow
are – make us jump and scream involuntarily, but rather cheaply. Instead, the
movie almost completely relies on building atmosphere and tension – and does so
remarkably well. What makes this even more impressive is the fact that director
Mike Flanagan has to do this in two different time periods simultaneously. Most
horror movies aren’t as effective as building one story line into the kind of
mounting terror achieved here – Oculus does it twice.
The
movie benefits from the performances. Sackhoff’s mounting paranoia is palpable,
and where she ends up is truly disturbing. Cochrane’s performance is very
silent and still – in many scenes, he seems lost inside his own head, staring
into the mirror, which makes the fact that he makes you sense his growing
insanity impressive. The two children who play Kaylie and Tim – Annalisse Basso
and Garret Ryan – really do feel like two siblings, who grow increasingly
terrified and know they have no one to count on except each other. In the
modern scenes, Gillan is excellent at making you guess whether or not she’s
insane, or she is actually correct. Thwaites isn’t as good as the skeptic – but
then the skeptic never has the best role. The main character may just be the
house itself – which like in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel – is a
single location that feels completely different in the two time periods and yet
undeniably the same.
Oculus does suffer a little from the fact that we know where the movie is going before it wants us to. The end of the movie is supposed to come as a shock to the audience, but I wasn’t the least bit shocked by it. In fact, it seems to me that it is the most obvious ending imaginable. And truth to be told, there really isn’t anything here that has been done before – and better. As a haunted house movie, it doesn’t rise to the level of last year’s The Conjuring or the previous year’s Insidious. But it’s still an effective little horror movie. One that worms its way under your skin, and stays there right up to its inevitable conclusion.
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