Oculus Review
By Casey Douglass
“I often wonder
what he's feeling.
Has he ever heard a word I've said?
Look at him now in the mirror dreaming
What is happening in his head?” - Some lyrics from Go To The Mirror Boy by The Who.
Has he ever heard a word I've said?
Look at him now in the mirror dreaming
What is happening in his head?” - Some lyrics from Go To The Mirror Boy by The Who.
The quoted lines above
are incredibly fitting for a review about Oculus, a new horror
film with a possessed mirror at the centre of every ghoulish event.
Image © Relativity Media |
Oculus is the
tale of a family torn apart by the machinations of said mirror, it’s
need to ‘feed’ and sow discord ultimately breaking them apart
with violence and murder.
After a highly charged
flashback, the film starts with Kaylie (Karen Gillan) trying to hook
up again with her brother Tim (Brenton Thwaites). Tim has been
staying in a mental institution since things all went south and has
only just been released as he has been deemed ‘cured’. Kaylie is
horrified that he has repressed, explained away and pushed down
everything that happened to them when they were younger, even his
promise for them both to come back and ‘deal with it’ when they
are bigger and stronger.
This dynamic informs
the rest of the film and it is one of the ways that Oculus
seems quite cerebral. By the midpoint of the film, I was unsure which
of the siblings was correct in their view, which is a testament to
the writing. I must admit that I didn’t find myself particularly
concerned for their well-being, but such is the way of any horror
film.
Image © Relativity Media |
The film is interlaced
with flashbacks to their younger days, the young Kaylie and Tim
living with their parents Alan (Rory Cochrane) and Marie Russell
(Katee Sackhoff), and settling into a new house as strange things
start to happen. Rory’s Alan is the unfortunate who decides to hang
the mirror in his office, and so succumbs first to its influence.
Marie then becomes paranoid and nervous about what he is up to locked
away in there all day. I must say that Katee Sackhoff steals the show
in these flashback scenes and plays Marie’s dwindling mental health
very deftly.
Image © Relativity Media |
As the film moves on,
the flashback scenes intersperse with the modern day attempts to
destroy the mirror and you are treated to the older grown up Tim and
Kaylie watching their younger selves living through the horror the
first time. I found this to be incredibly effective and added another
layer of ‘what the heck is going on?’ to things.
Image © Relativity Media |
I would give Oculus
4/5. If it had been that little bit more scary with two main
characters that I could actually care about I might have given it a
5.
Oculus on IMDb.
Oculus on IMDb.