Good horror movies are hard to find. Very hard to find.
Considering the “horror” market is dominated by exorcisms and different
spins on zombie/virus outbreaks, even the good ones that come out of
those sub-genres are hard to take seriously because there are just so
many of them and they each have just a subtly different core mechanic
working for them. It’s like if Pitbull made horror movies.Oculus is not a good horror movie because it isn’t really a horror movie. It certainly provokes a sense of dread and suspense, very efficiently at that, but it’s seldom “scary,” so it’s harder to categorize. I guess the best label I could give it is “supernatural thriller” or “Inception for Beginners (and also it’s scary sometimes).”
Honestly, I didn’t want to give Oculus a chance. It seemed interesting but when I saw a trailer, I felt bored. I only saw it after it came out and awarding reviews came pouring in, and at one point it had 12 articles on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes that were all positive, gaining the film a perfect 100% score. Eventually it went down to 71%, but that’s still impressive, especially for a scary movie in April (or ever).
After watching the trailer and being unimpressed, I was unimpressed for the wrong reasons. I thought to myself “this doesn’t look scary, it looks low-budget and it looks like it’s trying to capture the horror crowd at a time when there are no other scary movies to see.” I could just imagine the TV spots: “Oculus is the #1 Horror Movie in America.” But then again, I thought “actually, I hate when trailers show all the good stuff.” This is especially true for a horror film where the best parts are the parts you don’t know are coming yet. So between that and the reviews, I gave it a chance.
Oculus is, literally, about a haunted mirror. An old, antique mirror is passed down from owner to owner, all of whom suffer gruesome deaths that are explained by “police” and “scientists” with really simple causalities, like starvation and depression over failed gardening projects. Kaylie and Tim are children when they move in to a new house (shocking), and the mom, being the eccentric connoisseur of glassware that she is, purchases the damning gateway to Satan’s vanity. Slowly but surely, the mirror starts complicating everything: makes the dog crazy, convinces the husband to cheat on the wife, convinces the wife that the husband is cheating, but the real crazy part is when the mirror starts whispering things. Whispering things.
Anyway, events unfold and Tim is forced to shoot the dad because he goes on a violent whisper-fueled rampage. The son is whisked away to jail/counseling and his psychiatrist decides “Hey, he’s not as fucked up as you think, let him go.” Tim is released and allowed to feel sunshine on his skin, freedom in his soul, happiness in his mind once again :)
Then Kaylie completely ruins his life.
Kaylie convinces Tim that they have to retrieve the mirror and prove that it was the mirror that made their mom and dad crazy and it’s because of the mirror that Tim had to shoot their dad. She is hell-bent on clearing their family’s name and even Googles an entire history of the mirror’s (called the Lasser Glass) previous ownership. Tim thinks she’s crazy, and plays along with her ruse to prove her wrong. After all, he had spent years being told that his dad was just an abusive, cheating crazy person (as most software programmers tend to be) and that the mirror has nothing to do with anything. He finally feels content with his life and has closure, but Kaylie won’t have any of it.
So, being sane and not obsessed, she sets up a 3-camera reality show to observe the mirror, she installs sensors in the walls that detect when the temperature drops or rises and in the MOST sane and not obsessed display of normalcy, she rigs a Poean “kill-switch” device that is set to smash the mirror every 45 minutes unless someone resets the timer. The caveat here being that it is impossible to harm the mirror intentionally. It has force fields or some shit.
The film is clearly pretty low budget, save for some excellent cinematography, but that’s an admirable aspect of horror movies (if they work). Luckily, Oculus excels at making you say “What the actual fuck” every few minutes. It spirals out of control, on multiple levels, inviting you to question what is real and what is not, what is in the past and what is in the present, what is done on purpose and what is done by demon-mind-control.
It’s the film’s greatest strength but also its greatest weakness, because it essentially creates an all-powerful rule for itself, like that one kid in Kindergarten always did. You’re told “the mirror can make you do and think whatever it wants.” So, there’s never really a sense of hope or victory because any time you think something is going the protagonists’ way, the mirror just does whatever it wants.
BUT, it’s very clever about it. It’s not until about maybe 70% of the way through that you realize how all the different perceptions of reality start melding together. This isn’t a story about two kids who grew up and are challenging their demons, it’s something completely different. If you realize what’s happening before the end, it’s like Oculus is the cool kid filling you in on an inside joke. Although it panders a bit at certain parts, and while most of the focused shots aren’t wasted, there are a few random moments that are elaborated without having any lasting or important effects.
Nothing about the mirror is really even explained (nor is it particularly necessary), but the ending leaves options open for a sequel. The ending also can be the ending, which surprised me. I’d be content with a sequel but I’d be content without one, which is a perfect ending to me.
Oculus is frantic, tragic and purposely energetic. It’s an OCD patient’s nightmare, but it keeps you on the edge of your antique oak wood rocker by altering time, space and reality. It has its spooky moments, and plenty of chilling build-ups (even if some of the scares are accompanied by unnecessary non-diegetic scores), but Oculus is simply a suspense story. The scares are predictable but the twists are not, and I’ll take a magic mirror over zombie vampire priests… for now.
The Good:
+ Chilling and dreadful
+ Subverts horror tropes
+ Refreshing and original
+ Frenetic
The Bad:
- Cheats
- Panders slightly
- Some focal points have no real impact
8/10
My demons are better than your demons,
Kyle
