Chris At The Pictures

Based on the novel by Lois Lowry, The Giver is set in what appears to be a perfect world. But while suffering and war have been banished, so too have choice, diversity and colour. While his friends are assigned to ordinary jobs once coming of age, Jonas (Brenton Thwaites) is selected to learn from an elderly man (Jeff Bridges) about the reality of pain and pleasure that once existed within the real world.

From the outset, the story feels openly derivative of many other texts aimed at teenagers: you have the communities/districts from The Hunger Games, the sorting ceremony from Harry Potter and the edge-of-insanity faction leader from Divergent. While the entire premise is intrinsically interesting, the initial intrigue is unfortunately strangled by the references and ideas that worked much better – or worse – in other films.

Thwaites (who I rather enjoyed in Oculus) feels very out of place at the start but slowly eases into an easily replicable role, while Jeff Bridges appears to have become caught in some form of suspended animation since working on Tron: Legacy and continues that enjoyably grumbly performance, albeit bereft of L.E.D. trench coat. Meryl Streep as the matriarch adds a certain degree of watchable madness but has clearly been taking staring lessons from Kate Winslet in Divergent.

Unfortunately, Streep’s character is where the enjoyable female roles end. Katy Holmes as Jonas’ mother is utterly wasted, Taylor Swift is brought in for about two minutes during a flashback before vanishing into thin air, while the supposed love interest (We Are What We Are’s Odeya Rush) is criminally under-developed. Whatever problems I may have had with Divergent, at least it had some decent female roles whereas here, they are marginalised to the point where you could remove half of them and no-one would notice.

Due to the nature of the world in which the film takes place, the colour palette begins in drab black and white, but as the real world is revealed to Jonas, colour begins to seep into the frame accompanied by great rainbow bursts which carry a certain visual charm. Annoyingly, these scenes are not only unimaginatively shot, but the character reactions to what should be the extraordinary undiscovered beauty of the real world are frustratingly muted and bland. The tone of the movie is all over the place, an irksomely saccharine Christmas scene offset horrifically by a sequence in which Jonas experiences what is essentially a ‘Nam flashback.

Carried almost entirely by an interesting premise and watchable leads, The Giver pays lip service to an array of philosophical problems but has neither the strength nor running time enough to fully play out the central idea to maximum potential; a young adult adaptation that would have much more room to grow if it could only refrain from ripping off its predecessors. It’s intriguing, but ultimately forgettable.

2.5 stars

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