For every ten standard horror films there’s one that breaks
the mold, these are your SCREAMs and A Nightmare on Elm Street (believe it or
not that movie was pretty groundbreaking when it came out). I’m not saying Oculus is on the level of those genre-changing films but it’s
definitely right up there. On the surface you have a movie about an evil mirror
that kills those who look on it, past that you have a movie that seriously
treads the line on “Is this all just a figment of a disturbed imagination?” Let’s
do some plot, Alan Russell (Rory Cochran) buys a mirror without checking the
provenance, which would have told him the prior owners had a nasty nack for
dying badly. What follows is a long bit of “All Work and No Play Make Alan GO
CRAZY” leading up to the sound of some shots going off and Alan and his wife
Marie (Katee Sackoff) dead and all things looking like Alan just went nuts.
Their children, Tim and Kaylie, are both shipped off to different places with
Tim going to a mental institution after receiving the blame for his father’s
death. After he is released Tim (Brenton Thwaites) meets up with his sister
Kaylie (Karen Gillan). Tim has spent years learning that the mirror was only a
creation of his mind to deal with his father’s descent into madness, while
Kaylie has been able to focus her time directly into believing in an evil
mirror.
This is where the film really takes off, horror movies
always play with the idea that “It’s all in your head”, but usually it’s in the
form of some distrusting authority figures who we’re not supposed to take
seriously, this movie has one of the main characters casting doubt. If that
doesn’t make the water murky enough the trip results in the telling of the back
story intercut with real time in such a way that the two begin to overlap and
we really do begin to question the motive of the movie. The non-linear
storyline is a touch that really makes you feel what the characters are
feeling, it pulls you in to such a jarring state that you can understand the
heights they are willing to go to and that they are having a hard time trusting
their own eyes. Isn’t that everyone’s deepest fear, really? To not be able to
trust your own senses knowing that you’re so sure of something but there’s an
outside chance that you may just be losing your mind. That’s a downright amazing touch right there…because
it’s only when you feel truly safe that you can be properly scared.
This sounds like a very non-traditional horror movie, where
are the scares? Don’t worry about that, there are more than enough creepy faces
where there shouldn’t be and standard jump scares as well…but done in the right
way. I’ve really found that jump scares are a necessity in horror films but you
have to do them properly, in a not completely obvious way. Honestly though, it’s
the psychological impact of Oculus that
will leave you with the lights on, not the cheap scares.
I think Oculus,
while not for everybody, is a must for all fans of the horror genre. This flick
is the next in a progression of smarter horror films like Drag Me To Hell, or Cabin in
the Woods. There is so much more to the film than I’ve even listed here,
for the sanctity of spoiler-free, but as you slowly find yourself learning the
truth of what happened that night you only go further down the rabbit hole. You’ll
want to come back for more which, box office depending, was left wide open in
the most clichéd part of the film…the final shot sequel establisher!
