Oculus
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Director : Mike Flanagan
Cast : Karen Gillan, Brenton Thwaites, Rory Cochrane, Katee Sackhoff
Length : 105 minutes
Country: USA
Tim (Brenton Thwaites) and Kayle (Karen Gillian) Russell decide to document the supernatural activities of a mirror which they blame for the murder of their parents and several others in the course of history.
Horror fans still remember the 2008 horror film Mirrors by Alexandre Aja (the promising director of the remake of The Hills Have Eyes), a great example for building a narrative around an inanimate/inhuman object. Critics harshly criticized it because of the lack of originality in comparison to the South Korean Into the Mirror from which it was partly inspired. I always disagreed because I found Aja’s use of reflection and gore terrifying. In fact I remember that the first time I watched the film I could not stare at my own image in the mirror for the rest of the day. Oculus is very different from Mirrors because it focuses more on the abilities of the mirror to influence your own reality thus going beyond just the idea of ‘if there is a reflection somewhere I can find you and haunt you’.
Critics are already labeling Oculus as the scariest film they have seen in years. Firstly it does not rely heavily on found footage which could have been the case since the main characters have set cameras in the whole house. Secondly it does not rely on jump scares or gore sequences and even the few that are present in the film are revealed during the trailer, so I would advise you not to watch it. Thirdly Oculus seems to care about its characters and about the actors who are free to deliver strong performances. And finally because the initial twist (the mirror is haunted and kills people) is known by the characters since the beginning so the plot is not a predictable ‘who is causing these strange events in the house?’ situation.
The film tangles between illusion and reality, young Kayle, Tim and their older self until the idea of a consistent reality gets broken in the mind of the audience.
Oculus reminds me a lot of Insidious and Paranormal Activity, which is predicted since the producer of these three films are the same. Oculus focuses on creating a sustained tension through sharp editing. The film tangles between illusion and reality, young Kayle, Tim and their older self until the idea of a consistent reality gets broken in the mind of the audience. This concept ends up being not only confusing in a frightening way but also exciting from a structural point of view. Oculus in fact redefines the nonlinear narrative technique by making the actions of the past and the present overlap. Flanagan manages to instill fear for what happens in the past even if consciously the audience is aware that the main characters managed to survive to those ordeals.
Beside the cleverness of the project, Oculus and its quite predictable but still very enjoyable open ending presents many flaws as well. The concept of the film disappoints because it does not deliver many scares or details that would haunt the audience’s nightmares. The director focuses more on the exterior powers of the mirror and forgets to idolize the object ‘the haunted mirror’. As many horror fans know, every story has an idolized object that, if encountered in real life, reminds us directly of the film thus enhancing the viewing experience. V/H/S had the VHS horror found footage documentaries, The Conjuring had Annabelle the Doll, Sinister the haunted box of tapes etc. The mirror of Oculus does not end up being as haunting as one could expect. Finally some aspects are illogical: when Kayle learns that the mirror can manipulate the recorded images but she has already proved to her brother that the mirror is haunted she still decides to keep going with the experiment instead of destroying it, and also when Kayle suggests to Tim to stick together, in the very next scene, she is already separated from her brother. Obviously small mistakes like these need to happen in horror films because otherwise every supernatural event could be called into question. Truth still is though that Oculus had a lot of potential and could have been scarier, it ends up being nothing more than a creepy psychological thriller.
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