Oculus Review

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

The Human Centipede Review: 3 times the Charm.

Ahh yes, The Human Centipede. No doubt you have at least heard of this disgusting, graphic depiction of an ER patient's worst nightmare, but few have really seen it (or at least been able to stomach all 90 minutes of it). For the few thousand of you that have heard of the film, there's a few hundred that have seen part of it, a few dozen that have seen it all, and about Six of you that have realized that it is, indeed, a film (Six being capitalized as an allusion, by the way). It's not like "Monsturd" or "Ghost in a Teeny Bikini;" The Human Centipede is an actual horror film with very little humor, camp or lack thereof, at any given moment.

Yes, the premise seems silly, and overall the film does feel a bit preposterous. While actually watching, however, you'll tend to forget how funny and joke-worthy the concept is because you'll be drawn in to what is actually a tremendously engaging, psychologically torturing thriller-horror film from director Tom Six. Of course, the film is gross, but graphically gory this film is not! Your imagination is put to great use in scenes where you might think the most horrific spectacles would be occurring.

Yet, despite how strongly I'm trying to convince you that this film should be taken as a serious horror film, the acting is laughably atrocious at most parts. This is, of course, completely foregoing Dieter Laser as the German Dr. Heiter, who steals the show in every scene. Then again, if you know anything about the film, you'll realize that half the main cast will have a hard time getting words out... considering the predicament surrounding their speaking orifices.

What you'll have to grasp before really delving into this film is, beyond its shallow gimmick and over-the-top premise, there lies an above-average horror flick. It has all the regular makings of what most of us would consider a decent "horror" (stupid American girls, machinery nonsensically ceasing to work, creepy antagonist, an Asian), and by typical genre conventions it definitely passes. What it lacks in story (and logically sound mentality) it more than makes up for with a fantastic villain and pure, giddy, suspense-ridden uneasiness. A good chunk of this uneasiness isn't even from the biological terror; it's just plain creepy. Dr. Heiter is, quite frankly, psychotic. Combine this wonderful psychosis with a brilliant ego maniacal "genius" mentality, and you have all the makings of villainy in German form. The extremely dehumanizing acts he forces his victims to perform and his complete lack of sympathy shine him in the perfect horror-villain light.

Unfortunately, he's not utilized to the best of his ability. I was on the fence for a while, debating with myself whether or not he worked better as a short, sweet villain or a crazed but well characterized antagonist who could've been explored much deeper and physically used much more creatively. I ended up landing on the latter, and you'll see what I mean by the end of the film. Aside from Dr. Heiter, however, there's a lot left to be desired when it comes to the other characters. They make ridiculously stupid decisions here and there, especially Katsuro (Akihiro Kitamura) at one pivotal point in the film. There's also a very restricted soundtrack here, so what you hear is all diegetic atmosphere. Mm mmmm.

The film also doesn't have your D-grade "jump out" scare tactics that stupid movies like to use. Its gross-out factor is certainly there, and you wouldn't be watching the film if it weren't for that. But luckily, the disgust level never devolves into stupidity like segments of Hostel or Saw do all too often. The film is just enough raunchy mayhem, and although it's definitely disturbing, that's exactly what it's aiming for. After watching, you can say you dislike the movie because it was "gross" or made you queasy, but that's like saying you disliked The Hangover because it made you laugh. A film like The Human Centipede has clear intentions, and when those intentions succeed, you have to give the film credit. There's nary a moment where you'll say "this is just ridiculous" because it just won't degrade to that level.

So yes, I recommend The Human Centipede if you're looking for a deviant to the monotonous garbage of Hollywood horror flicks being churned out every few weeks. It's fun, it's different, and it's suspenseful. It achieves everything it wants to, and while it's not perfect in any regard and won't win chains of awards for anything in particular, it's not the "stupid torture porn" you may be expecting.

7.5/10

-Kyle Shelton

Angels & Demons Review: The Holy Scavenger Hunt...Again.

The DaVinci Code gave us, the public, quite the shock with such antagonizing views against the Catholic Church that made us question faith and organized religion as a whole. Then, we realized it was a fiction conspiracy story no more elusive than the Bourne series. Silly us...now we have the follow up to Robert Langdon's atheistic ventures with yet another unholy happening in a holy setting: the death of a pope in Vatican City. But wait, there's more! The large Hadron collider in Sweden now plays a role in this yarn of Yahweh...so does Angels & Demons connect on a more personal and interesting level?

Well, if you've seen/read The DaVinci Code (or ever participated in an Easter egg hunt) then there's not too much to look forward here.

First off, the pope dies in Vatican City and its time to choose a new one...but who? As a congregation of cardinals discusses candidates, 4 of the top choices are subsequently kidnapped (along with a vial of antimatter from the Hadron complex).

Quick side-note on antimatter, if it comes into contact with, literally, anything, it will cause "violent" disturbances in our space. Its suspended in a vacuum-tight capsule which the kidnappers use as their threatening weapon in Vatican, much like a bomb, if their demands aren't met (along with killing the 4 kidnapped candidates for the papacy).

Who better to decrypt the mysterious threats and save the day than Harvard symbology professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks)? Oh, yeah, the physicist who holds the secrets to destroying the world via rapid atomic collision, Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer). Alas, our story begins when Dr. Langdon is summoned to the Vatican to follow the legacy of the fabled "Illuminati" from times past and locate the 4 papal successors, along with the devastating device of doom, and save the world from disarray, accompanied by the Vatican police and Vittoria.

Well, Angels & Demons certainly kept up with the pacing of DaVinci Code, in the sense that its relatively relentless in its "Hurry before the Rapture ensues!" timing. Tom Hanks returns as the snarky yet incredibly and conveniently lucky guesser Dr. Langdon. Though, personally, I've never been a huge fan of Hanks, he returns in good form, reprising a relatively likable and entertaining character.

As for the plot, well, its based on a book so its hard to criticize the story without having read its source. However, I can say that it literally is just one humongous scavenger hunt that seems to never end. Langdon goes to a library, second-class female assistant supporting actress finds a clue, they dash to the scene which contains an angel pointing them in the direction of the next clue, OR DOES IT?! This formula gets repetitive to the point of menial chore. At one point, I found myself hammering to just get on with the ending and see who becomes the new pope. Even kids get sick of long scavenger hunts after a while...especially if the prize ultimately isn't worth it. Lucky for us, though, we don't know what our prize is!

Also, the message of combining scientific research and discovery with religious faith and credibility seems to be the big recurring message in the movie. Its warm and heartfelt, but really, it doesn't do a great job of conveying this idea emotionally (especially with all the horribly static characters, including Langdon).

Running a 2 hour and 20 minute length, Angels & Demons repeats the same formula as DaVinci code. It certainly pulls you in, like a fisher does to a hungry fish. However, after a while, that fish will get tired and probably just give up, so in this case, it depends how hungry you are for this sort of thing. If you absolutely love Dan Brown, DaVinci Code, or religious conspiracies in general, you'll probably enjoy Angels & Demons. If you less than love any of those 3 categories, than this will ultimately become a forgettable forte' into Summer blockbuster cash-in. Angels & Demons remains a "fun" movie, but perhaps not for the $7-$10 of your hard-earned cash to see something that will thoroughly entertain you in and out.

5/10

-Kyle Shelton