From director Mark Flanagan, Oculus is a horror film concerning the plight of Kaylie Russel
(Karen Gillan) who attempts to prove the innocence of her convicted brother Tim
(Brenton Thwaites) after witnessing the deaths of her mother and father (Katee
Sackhoff) as a child. With Kaylie convinced
that the real cause of death was a supernatural force that still resides within
a mirror hanging in the family home, the two siblings return to seek it out and
exonerate Tim.
In a period of horror film-making where the scares are
reliant on making the audience jump or simply displaying ridiculous amounts of
gore to sell the film, it is a real breath of fresh air to report that Oculus does away with that. True, it has
its visually shocking moments, but the film retains a level of chilling,
oppressive atmosphere by taking ‘jump’ scares out completely and taking time to
build the suspense. The horror is all about slow, deliberate revelation that
caused me to recoil into my seat several times and drew one or two yelps from
myself and other members of the audience.
The central device of the mirror provides a tangible source
of fear – an interesting respite from faceless demons or devil-like possessions
– that presents a silent but unavoidable antagonist. A mirror shows you exactly
as you are, it won’t airbrush out imperfections: when you look into one you are
seeing yourself laid bare, and the film plays with that to a great extent. The
set pieces are given real weight by a throbbing, undulating musical score from
the Newton Brothers, and the clean-cut, intimate cinematography gets in close
to the central characters and doesn’t let them go.
The story itself switches backwards and forwards from the
traumatic events of the past to the experimental investigation of the present,
as Kaylie and Tim attempt to undo the mistakes of the past but are drawn into
an increasingly uncontrollable and inescapable reliving of said events. The
twisting, unravelling narrative feels a little jumbled within the first twenty
minutes but unties itself after that and the evolving story is enjoyably
unpredictable.
Karen Gillan is maturing into a really fine actress, taking
her leave from Doctor Who and moving
on to what will hopefully be a fruitful big-screen career with a frenetic,
pre-occupied performance that perfectly balances the determined act of someone
desperate to make amends for the past with the role of someone obsessed with a
single-minded purpose. Thwaites does well in his role, but the father character
is given little to no development, but both those performances are overshadowed
by Sackhoff, who breaks free of a string of macho, butch-badass roles and lends
a number of chills as the mother driven mad by the mirror.
Oculus is an intelligent
horror movie that does its best to break free of the mainstream schlock that
surrounds it and – through a combination of solid performances, an interesting
central horror device and a delicately crafted narrative – succeeds in bringing
something fresh to the table, coming to a satisfying and uncompromising finale.
4 Stars
