Oculus

"You see what it wants you to see."

Filmology Rating: 2.5 out of

For years I told people I wasn't a fan of horror films but I then realized that was a lie. I love that feeling I get that I could be walking and having a killer waiting for me around the corner. Just the sense of not knowing and helplessness. I find those feelings to be completely engaging. What I don't like is gore. I cannot stand the Saw films because they have no meat to them. How many times can you watch people being tortured? And please don't tell me that they have mind-twisting plots. They are only twisting plots to those without a brain.

Point being, going into this film I had no idea what I was going to get. I knew nothing about this film, never saw a trailer or TV spot, and I only saw the poster for the first time going into the film. I had as about a blank slate as I could have. Walking into the theatre I already had conflicting thoughts. "From the producer of Paranormal Activity and Insidious." Those words were both words of promise and dread. I liked Insidious enough but I overly cannot stand the Paranormal Activity films.

Onto the film itself. It is really good at creating the mood, which most recent horror films like Mama and The Conjuring have done as well. You know from the moment you see that mirror that it's evil. You never need to be told, you can just sense it. Yet like most evil things you are drawn to it. You want to know the mystery behind it, you want to know what it will make you see, you want to know what it did to this family. The film is trying its best to tell a nonlinear story and at the beginning I'm really going with it. I'm on the edge of my seat wondering when will the mirror strike and how. And when it does I get some get vibes of The Shining and Black Swan which only makes me more interested in your film.

The film does try to set up a mythology for the mirror and it might actually succeed, but if you were to ask me today how the mirror came to be, I couldn't tell you. I cannot foresee the mirror becoming a horror classic like Michael or Freddy but they do at least try. I feel I should also talk about the acting, which is normally forgotten in a horror film. The two main leads, Karen Gillan and Brenton Thwaites, as well as their younger selves, Annalise Basso and Garret Ryan, do a pretty good job in this film. I believe the terror when the time comes, but I also actually believe that they are brother and sister which doesn't happen often with horror films.

Where the film loses me is the third act. It took a long time setting up this world so you are expecting the payoff to be good. But it really isn't. It feels like something that could have easily been out of The Woman in Black. The nonlinear storytelling catches up to the film at the end and it just wants to end, it doesn't want to leave you feeling complete with the story. It is clear that they want to turn this film into a franchise and I would have been completely happy with that if the journey to the end felt worth it and not like a train that was coming to a crash.

Overall the film is a good suspense film. You will not leave feeling that the mirrors in your house will attack you, you will not get that sense of fear that I got when walking out of Halloween the first time that Michael would be waiting for me on my dead-end street. This film will not shock you, it doesn't do anything groundbreaking, but it also doesn't feel repetitive. I do hope to see more in this mythology because the storytelling possibilities are endless. The next film should totally take place in a mirror maze.

Rating: Rent It

-Jonny G