Oculus

Here's how I ended up seeing Oculus, a movie I ordinarily would've waited for DVD release. I took my car in for an oil change and a minor repair. I took it to Pep Boys, because I like their service, but it always takes a while. They are next door to a mall that has a movie theater, so I time it so I can drop the car off, have breakfast at a diner, and then see a movie. The pickings were slim this week, so instead of Mr. Peabody and Sherman I saw Oculus, a horror film that is getting decent reviews.

And it is decent, but not revelatory. The story is pretty simple--it's about a haunted mirror. The action cuts back and forth between two time frames--the present, when a young man (Brenton Thwaite) is released from the loony bin. He's picked up by his sister (Karen Gillan), and it unfolds that eleven years earlier, his mother and father went crazy. The father killed the mother and Thwaite killed the father.

Gillan has always been show it was the mirror's fault, and has the research to back it up. Since it first appeared in the record, everybody who has owned it has come to a grisly end. She's purloined it from the auction house where she works and taken it back to the family house, where she will prove that it is supernatural and destroy it.

Directed and edited by Mike Flanagan, Oculus succeeds because of its sense of dread. Sure there are ghosties that pop up, but it almost doesn't need them. I also liked the way Flanagan cuts back and forth in time, sometimes including both time periods in the same shot, as if the past and present were haunting each other.

The film was ideal for my purpose--a way to passably kill some time. It doesn't transcend the genre, and nor did it stick with me--I didn't come home and cover up my mirrors, for example. I did like Gillan, she kind of reminded me of Jennifer Lawrence. She also hits my two favorite crush areas--from the U.K. (Scottish) and a redhead!

My grade for Oculus: C+.