It has been a long time since I have seen a horror movie in theaters. Literally, this one coming out in April, is the first one to come out since the first week of January. That film was of course Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, which literally came out on DVD before the next major horror movie in theaters.
It was a slow year, I guess.
So we got Oculus, a horror movie about mirrors. Cool. I hope it isn’t like Mirrors. I never saw it, but I did see a certain scene with Christy Carlson Romano from Mirrors 2. Okay, so scratch that, I hope it is similar to Mirrors 2.
Evil Starbuck? I guess that’s new. Definitely already scared going in.
Oculus is a hard movie to describe. So let’s just say it involves one family.
This family moved into a new house, but don’t worry, the house isn’t haunted. No, the dad (Rory Cochrane) gets a fancy antique mirror, and it starts to get him sorts of angry. There is a definite aura of bad in their house. The mom (Katee Sackoff) is starting to freak out. Needless to say, something bad happens, and the kids (Garrett Ryan, Annalise Basso) survive. The boy has to go to a mental ward.
Now many years later he is 21 (Brenton Thwaites) and his older sister (Karen Gillan) is glad he is back. Because now they can destroy the mirror. They know that the mirror destroyed their lives, so now they finally want to destroy it so that it doesn’t kill anymore. But first, they also want proof to show to the authorities. So they set up a series of cameras and tests to show the demonic powers of the mirror. No, don’t worry, this didn’t become a found footage film. Just a really fucked up one.
A fucked up film usually features a couple child actors, to maximize the fuckery.
Oculus is a strange movie. Did I already say that? Like, really really weird.
It doesn’t tell you the story in order, no. You get to see the story of the kids and their parents, spliced with the kids older and trying to test and experiment with the mirror.
Because of that, sometimes, it is really hard to follow along with the movie. Constant back and forth. Not to mention the whole point of the movie seems to be to confuse the viewer. The mirror shows you what it wants to show you. So every other scene has something not real occurring, meaning you never really know what is going on.
By the end, you know. Oh yes, you will know by sure. And it is kind of fucked up too. The film isn’t particularly gory and there isn’t a huge cast of characters.
So why the low score? Confusion level. It had an interesting storyline, decent characters, some cool stuff happen. But at the same time, I have no idea what was going on through most of it.