Movie Review: Oculus (2013)

In my post about The Strain, I talked about how I'd grown to appreciate gory horror a lot more as I've grown older.  But my favorite kind of horror is still of the psychological variety, which is where Oculus falls.

It starts with a man being released from a mental institution, with the admonition that he stay away from his sister.  Then his sister shows up and tries convince her brother to help her destroy the evil, cursed mirror that terrorized them as kids, and which they believe was responsible for the gruesome deaths of their parents.  So this movie is a grand stand-off between a pair of siblings and a big, antique mirror.

A lot of modern horror seems to struggle with the role of technology when facing the paranormal.  Cell phones in particular create difficulty because, once you know you're in trouble, why not just call for help?  The most interesting thing about this film is how much technology permeates it.  The sister has set-up the mirror (or "Lasser Glass", as they call it) in the office of their childhood home, and has surrounded it with cameras, alarms, food, water and telephones, all of which are to be used as safe-guards while engaging the mirror.  But as the night progresses, the reliability of those safe-guards is called into question.

There are a lot of excellent performances in this film, most notably by the women in the film.  Karen Gillan plays the intensely focused sister (with amazingly buoyant red hair... though it was possibly a wig considering her follow-up film) and Katee Sackhoff plays the siblings' afflicted mother in a series of flashbacks.

I really enjoyed this film, and it creeped me out during the first half.  The last half felt a little more conventional, and the ending is fairly predictable.  But it doesn't really drop off in terms of mood-- the quality is pretty high all the way through.  If you like psychological horror, this is definitely worth checking out.

Afterward, you can check out the short film it was based on, Oculus Chapter 3 - The Man with the Plan, on YouTube.  It's very low-budget, the acting isn't terribly compelling, and there's very little of the cinematic style of the feature film, but the basic idea of confronting an evil mirror while using technological safe-guards is all in place and creepy enough in its own right.