Oculus (2013) [Blu-ray]
Horror

Tagline: You see what it wants you to see.

Seeing is deceiving in this disturbingly original horror flick that reflects heart-stopping terror as you've never imagined! It's been ten years since the lives of siblings Tim and Kaylie Russell were shattered and Tim was convicted of murdering their parents. Now released from a mental institution, Tim wants to move on, but his sister has other plans. Kaylie blames their childhood nightmare on the Lasser Glass - an antique mirror with a grisly history - which she intends to destroy by any means possible, even as the mysterious entity continues to cast sinister spells on anyone who gazes into it.

Storyline: The twenty-one year-old Timothy "Tim" Allen Russell is discharged from a mental institution by his psychiatric Dr. Shawn Graham completely healed from a childhood trauma. His sister Kaylie welcomes him in the parking area and brings him home. Then she tells that they need to destroy an ancient mirror that she has just bought in an auction. The reluctant Tim follows his sister and has fragmented recollections from his childhood, when his mother Marie buys a mirror for the home office of his father Alan. Kaylie and Tim see a woman with their father in his office and the behaviors of Alan and Marie change, ending in a family tragedy. Kaylie blames the mirror and now she wants to destroy it with Tim. Will they succeed? Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, August 9, 2014 -- Mundane, everyday objects becoming evil—or at least becoming a portal to evil—have been a horror staple since time immemorial, and the unease generated by seeing a common item in a new, malevolent light has kept people like Stephen King rolling around in piles of cold, hard cash to this very day. Interestingly, the word "oculus" itself actually refers to a portal, the openings at the top of some domes or cupolas that allow a view of the sky. In Oculus, the "portal" issue becomes paramount, though etymologists will also be aware of a more general "ocular" aspect—i.e., eye—playing into the story as well. Co-writer and director Mike Flanagan based this feature film on a 2005 short he did entitled Oculus: Chapter 3 — The Man With the Plan (included on this Blu-ray as a supplement), in what was originally intended to be a nine part aggregation of shorts built around the idea of a possessed mirror. The short is an interesting if somewhat underdeveloped "found footage" saga detailing a researcher's locked room interaction with the demonic mirror, one documented by a battery of cameras the guy has set up to record what he expects to be nefarious events. While the feature film iteration includes a similar battery of cameras, luckily it shies away from the by now completely rote found footage formula, instead investing in a rather brilliant structural artifice that combines two different timelines as if they were happening simultaneously, a gambit which plays rather artfully into one character's mental instability and reactions to the deadly reflective device. Oculus has a lot to recommend it, but it's also a rather slow, talky horror outing, and for that reason may not rise to the visceral level that adrenaline junkies prefer for their fright fests.

Oculus begins with an unsettling sequence which shows two young children in a panic, obviously trying to get away from something bad. A somewhat older man enters the frame and points a gun at the two young children, and then there's a jump cut to that same man, now identified as Tim Russell (Brenton Thwaites), talking to a therapist about this scene, which is evidently a recurring dream of sorts. Tim mentions that this is the first time he's been the shooter in the dream, which his therapist takes as a sign that Tim has finally come to terms with some long ago trauma and is therefore ready to be paroled back out into the world. It soon becomes evident that Tim has been institutionalized for years, and the clear assumption is that he killed some members of his family. Oddly, he's released into the care of his sister Kaylie (Karen Gillan), despite the fact that the good doctor tells Tim he needs to guard his recovery more than his relationship with his sibling.

Kaylie seems to have an agenda of her own which is centered around an old antique mirror that is being sold by an auction house where she works. When she intercedes and purloins the mirror, putting it in the childhood home where she and Tim grew up, things start to finally unfold a bit more clearly. At this point, the film bifurcates into two time streams, one a bit over a decade ago, and another one happening in "current" time. It's revealed that the two kids seen in the opening sequence are in fact Kaylie and Tim (played by Annalise Basso and Garrett Ryan), and that Tim's dreams and subsequent "confession" may actually have little to do with what actually happened to the siblings long ago.

In the past time storyline, we see Tim and Kaylie's parents Alan (Rory Cochrane) and Marie (Katee Sackhoff) become more and more unhinged after a large antique mirror is hung in Alan's home office. Both parents start to exhibit completely bizarre behaviors and become more and more abusive to the kids (these elements make some parts of Oculus extremely unpleasant to watch). The inherent helplessness of being a child caught in these desperate circumstances is only exacerbated by the film's premise that whatever force is within the mirror is keeping Kaylie and Tim from reaching outside help. The interesting thing here is that Oculus actually features very little of traditional horror tropes like shock cuts or graphically spooky special effects. Perhaps appropriately, given what happens to Tim's state of mind, things are played from an interior perspective.

What really makes Oculus work, though, is the tension between the two timeframes. Adult Tim has come to the conclusion that what he thinks happened ten years or so previously was all a delusion. There was no possessed mirror, his parents didn't go bonkers, and he shot his parents in a fit of paranoid rage. The past timeline makes it clear that there is indeed a possessed mirror and that the kids are innocent victims of a demonic curse that has stretched on for centuries. But it's exactly this point that ultimately undercuts some of Oculus' impact. How much creepier would it have been had Flanagan refused to clarify whether or not Tim actually was delusional? That would have given the film's denoument—which provides plenty of fodder for at least another eight Oculus outings, per Flanagan's original concept—even more heft.

Oculus is an actors' piece more than the run of the mill horror outing, and in this regard, Flanagan has assembled a top flight cast that really sells the material. While Thwaites and Gillan are incredibly visceral, the film belongs squarely to Cochrane and (especially) Sackhoff as the beleaguered, increasingly bonkers parents. The scenes with Sackhoff going after the kids have an intensity that few horror films—even much more explicitly violent ones—ever attain. It's notable (and commendable) that Oculus doesn't rely on tactics like overt gore to achieve his scares. This may not be a traditional blood and guts horror outing, but it manages to create a palpably unsettling ambience that some horror aficionados may actually find more effective.

The structural ingenuity on display in Oculus bodes very well for the future of Flanagan, though he needs to make sure his third act builds on the momentum of the first two, rather than just coasting, as seems to be the case with this film. I personally would have liked Oculus better had there been a bit of ambiguity about whether Tim was bat guano crazy or not, but the simultaneous unfolding of two disparate (and desperate) stories makes this a thrill ride quite a bit of the time. Technical merits here are first rate, and despite some stumbles in the late going, Oculus comes Recommended.

[CSW] -3.2- Oculus initially appears to be a generic “things moving behind you in the mirror” horror flick. But it is exceptionally clever and original. Great cinematography, perfect sound effects and unexpected twists give this movie a life all its own. A cleverly executed mind game that generates scares via structural ingenuity, Oculus suggests a world coming terrifyingly unmoored from its bearings. Oculus succeeds in keeping the viewer's bearings unsettled as the Helmer's effective building of dread curdles into a series of narrative twists as dislocating as an Escher-drawn staircase. A bracingly original horror flick, and exceptionally clever. After you watch this, good luck standing in front of the bathroom mirror that night.
[V4.5-A5.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box.

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