By Melissa Antoinette Garza
Sunday night as everyone at the theater was rushing to the sequel of The Amazing Spiderman, my best friend Meghan Winkler and I went to see the less publicized Oculus. Including us, there were only 6 people at the viewing. From what I hear, the 6 of us made a better choice than those watching Spidey.
To be honest, I didn’t expect much from Oculus. It’s a WWE production and other than Barricade (2012) their films have been awful. The plan was for my best friend and I to watch a movie we would make fun of. That did not happen. I was actually shocked at how great it was. It gave me nightmares, which nowadays, unless it’s a home invasion film like The Strangers (2008), never happens. The only other recent movie that haunted me like this was The Conjuring (2013).
Oculus opens with 21 year old Tim Russell (Brenton Thwaites) being released from a mental hospital. He entered years ago for shooting his father Alan (Rory Cochrane). Alan had just killed Tim and his older sister Kaylie’s (Karen Gillan) mother Marie (Katee Sackhoff) and had even turned on the kids. After years of psychological evaluations and his doctors working with him, Tim believes that his mother had a psychotic episode and that his father was just a brutal murderer. His doctor believes him to be cured from the delusion he and his sister had spouted as children.
Kaylie never entered an institution and has a different take on the past. She remembers her father as a kind and gentle man who was desperately in love with Marie. Upon purchasing a new home, Alan bought an old antique mirror for his office. Slowly, the mirror took control of both Marie and Alan causing them both to go insane. The mirror fed off them. When they were both dead, Kaylie and Tim swore they would kill the mirror when they were older and stronger.
Kaylie still believes that the mirror is what caused the insanity and ultimate grizzly fate of her parents. She prepared for his release by finding the mirror and taking it to their childhood home. She researched the history and found that there were other casualties associated with the mirror. She sets up cameras, a mechanism that would break the mirror if no one reset the timers she had set, food and water. Lastly, she made certain her fiancé would call her every hour to make sure she was okay.
When Tim gets to the old house and sees the extent that Kaylie went to, he attempts to talk sense into her with a reminder that causation and correlation are two very different things. He tries to tell her that they were so traumatized as children, that they made up the story about their father to ease their pain. Kaylie is shocked that Tim no longer believes.
Throughout the movie, we see the deterioration of Alan and Marie’s marriage while strange occurrences plague the household. We really get two tales within this movie that intertwine in a clever and unique way that I can honestly say I’ve never seen before.
For a good portion of the film, it is similar to The Omen (1976), in the sense that the events that took place could be logically explained as a series of unfortunate events and unusual coincidences. Tim is so reasonable that the skeptic will definitely be drawn to the character and his need to both believe what his doctors have been telling him for years and even more than that to persuade his sister so that she can live a normal healthy life.
I won’t spoil whether it’s the man or the mirror that is to blame as I think one has to watch this as it’s so well written and has an amazing cast.
There are so many movies and books about evil mirrors, but none quite like this. It’s original and doesn’t pretend to have all the answers. It’s haunting and though there are a few gruesome moments, it’s definitely not for the gore-whores. This is a thinking (wo)man’s film. The dialogue is intelligent and though it has some very good jump scares, it plays the lead-up to the jump so well that the tension is already at a maximum pitch when the payoff is thrown at you. In fact, for as many movies that I have seen with Meghan, I’ve never seen her jump nearly out of her chair. During one scene, she jumped a mile at me. Her jump made me jump. It was hilarious but I can’t even blame her for being so freaked out as the film’s build-up is done incredibly well.
Now for my favorite part, I’m talking about the casting. I generally start with the leading cast, but here I must start with Rory Cochrane. I have always adored Rory Cochrane. He was a teenage crush. From Dazed and Confused (1993) to Empire Records (1995) – hell, I even watched CSI when he was on it. I just adore him. That made this film a little harder for me as even when Alan descended into madness, I was still on his side. He could have killed the kids and I would have been “poor Rory! I love him! Damn, those kids!”
Actually, the actors who played young Tim and Kaylie were really good. Not only did they pick children who resembled their adult counterparts, but they chose children who could act. So often in films, actors under 14 are extremely difficult to watch. At least for me, I usually hate kid actors. Even their voices and antics get to me, but here it was different. They just did it right.
Karen Gillan of Doctor Who popularity (thanks to my husband Stephen Garza, I know that), though I have seen more of her on the amazingly hilarious NTSF:SD:SUV, was fantastic. Kaylie’s desperation to get through to her brother and to kill what should be an inanimate object is so persuasive. In a few situations, scenarios are shown two different ways. One way a memory is shown through Kaylie’s eyes where the mirror is in control and taking the shape of a beautiful woman seducing her father. In another scene we are shown a scene through Tim’s thoughts, where he believes Alan was having an affair thus implying that Kaylie’s memories of the mirror are false.
Brenton Thwaites also was very good in his role. The sensibility of Tim definitely plays well against Kaylie’s insistence. I had never seen him in anything before but was impressed by his acting.
I can’t say enough about this movie. There wasn’t a moment I was taken out of it. If there was any complaint, it was the amount of CGI used; but even that makes sense. Though, it was used quite a bit, it was done well and only in necessary scenes.
Overall, there wasn’t a bad actor in the group. The film was intense and kept one guessing. The conclusion was surprising and left some questions unanswered.
Scared Stiff Rating: 8/10
You sold me on seeing the movie!
Awesome! Tell me what you think! I’d like to know 🙂 I hope you love it as much as I do.