Directed by Mike Flanagan
Starring Karen Killan, Brenton Thwaites, Rory Cochrane, Katee Sackhoff, Annalise Basso and Garrett Ryan
In a word - wow. I'm still trying to wrap my head around this movie three days (and two viewings) later; I thought it was THAT good. Taking its premise of a haunted mirror to the nth degree, writer-director Mike Flanagan managed to craft a real jam-up thriller here that really does encapsulate pretty much everything I look for in a horror flick. It's slick, it has pacing on its side, it has genuinely likable characters, and it's really f**kin' creepy in the way that I wasn't gut-wrenchingly tense WHILE I was watching the film but I thought about it tons afterward. Those don't come along very often.
The premise that Mike Flanagan doles out here is a simple one: a cursed mirror with the ability to induce hallucinations in anybody within a certain radius. Another simple setup was "cursed house that kills anyone who enters it," and I see more than a few similarities here between Flanagan and Takashi Shimizu's Ju-On series. Both started off as short films that got expanded to a full-length treatment, both have ace villains, and both pack one hell of an emotional wallop at the end of said theatrical film. But I digress. Flanagan deserves a ton of credit here, both for his hand with horror but with how deftly he handles the emotion of this story. With that, let's get right to it.
Oculus is a movie that takes place over two different time frames. In the present, Tim Rusell (Brenton Thwaites) is released from a psychiatric hospital, immediately reconnecting with his older sister Kaylie (Karen Gillan in a performance that makes me really want to see her in more horror films). The relationship here is very close with hints of strain underneath the surface, particularly when Tim lets Kaylie know that he wouldn't allow her to visit him for the past several months in order for him to gain his release. Hey, fair tradeoff, if you ask me. Kaylie, meanwhile, is an employee at an auction house who uses her position to acquire an old antique mirror. Cue creepy music.
The mirror, dubbed the "Lasser glass," is your star villain of the film. Yes, folks, an inanimate object, but trust me - it's way more compelling than that. A good portion of the first trimester of the flick focuses on Kaylie trying to get Tim to live up to the promise that they made as kids, and flashbacks have already begun to kick in showing these events.
The movie starts to bob and weave its timelines here, and the past segment also has its own introduction as Tim and Kaylie's father Alan (Rory Cochrane) buys the mirror and plants it in his home office. Almost immediately, the weird incidents begin to pile up, as Alan's wife Marie (Katee Sackhoff) has visions of her body decaying while Alan is seduced by a ghostly woman from the mirror named Marisol. To say nothing of the kids. The child versions of Tim and Kaylie get a LOT of screentime here as they watch their parents' marriage deteriorate as a result of the mirror's influence, with Alan slowly going insane, Marie's paranoia overcoming her, and a series of surprises that eventually results with Alan chaining Marie up in a bedroom and attempting to murder the entire family.
Annalise Basso and Garrett Ryan deserve a TON of credit for their work as the child versions of the main characters, because, again, kids in horror movies are always a dicey prospect with me. As much as I enjoyed last week's flick The Babadook...the kid was occasionally pretty grating. Not so here. At times, they're even more emotional and resonant than their adult counterparts, so here's hoping we see these two in stuff for years to come. Anyway, all of this leads up to the promise, as everyone realizes that the mirror possesses demonic powers, and as they are led away by the police, Kaylie and Tim swear that they will destroy the mirror as adults.
And we see this play out in the present day. Tim no longer believes in the power of the mirror, his years of psychiatric care having convinced him that there were logical explanations for everything that happened to him as a kid. Kaylee, meanwhile, has spent her young adult years researching the history of the mirror, finding out that it is responsible for an unholy amount of deaths over the years. She places it under a "kill switch," a booby trapped anchor that will smash it unless a timer is reset every 30 minutes. But she wants to document its power first with a whole host of electronic gadgets. My friends, that's mistake number one, and it doesn't take long for the mirror's influence to start workings its magic.
There are a couple things that really did a number on me in Oculus. One was the relationship between the siblings, which was powerful in both the child and adult forms. But the power that the mirror has, the ability to get into people's minds and make them see...whatever the hell it wants (just like the poster says) is ingenious. From that simple setup, Flanagan manages to mine tons of situations and genuine surprises. In addition to that, every character death (and there are four) really packs a punch and are infinitely more than just body count. When the movie hits its money sequences, with the mirror pulling out every trick in the book to avoid its death sentence and keep Kaylee and Tim inside their childhood house, it's chilling and emotional at the same time.
And then that ending. Oh my. (/Michael Cole) Dark, surprising, and heartbreaking all at the same time.
With that, here is the highest praise that I can give Oculus...it actually left me wanting a sequel, for reasons that I won't get into because it would involve some pretty heavy spoilers. I don't know how many other people would connect with this movie to the point that I did, but if you're willing to suspend a little disbelief and tolerate just a couple cheap jump scares, Oculus will run you right over.
Rating time. Get ready. **** out of ****. I can't remember the last film released chronologically that I gave that rating to, but suffice to say, it's been a while. My absolute highest recommendation.
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