Horror
Distrubutor:
Universal Pictures UK
Rating: 15
Release Date:
13th June 2014 (UK)
Director:
Mike Flanagan
Cast:
Karen Gillan, Brenton Thwaites, Katee Sackhoff, Rory Cochrane
When reviewing a film - or anything for that matter - it's so much easier if it is either brilliant or rubbish. If it's good, you can wax lyrical for several hundred words about how wonderful all those involved are and how enriched the viewer will be having watched it. If it's bad it's equally effortless to go into detail about the reasons why you should avoid it. The most difficult films to critique are those which are middle of the road, neither good nor bad, neither here nor there. Oculus (2013) - the new horror from writer / director Mike Flanagan, who was responsible for the recent Absentia (2013) - is one such film. There is nothing particularly wrong with this lukewarm chiller, heavy though it is with old-fashioned, conservative frights. However neither does it live up to its potential; if, going by the wonderfully bizarre posters which were released to advertise it, you are expecting a suitably gothic grotesquerie, you are likely to be sorely disappointed.
Tim (Brenton Thwaites) is a troubled young man. After witnessing a series of disturbing events which claimed the lives of his parents, he has spent the last eleven years in a mental institution. Now released he plans to start his life anew. Unfortunately his sister Kaylie (Karen Gillan - of Dr Who fame), has other ideas. She is convinced that an antique mirror which their father bought, was in some way responsible for the horrific occurrences that resulted in their parent's deaths. Through the auction house where she and her fiancé work, Kaylie has tracked down the mirror, and has now taken it back to her family's old home where she intends with Tim's help, to exorcise the evil - which she believes possess it - once and for all.
Oculus' main problem - as pointed out earlier - is that there isn't one. Everything about the film - from the acting and direction, to it's 'look' on screen - is executed with competence, in an effective, if somewhat pedestrian manner. The result is the disappointing kind of film increasingly churned out now in the name of horror, but which is unlikely to raise more than an eyebrow amongst audiences beyond the populist fifteen certificate age-group. The other difficulty (if it can be termed as such) is that the crux of the film - the reason behind the mirror's strange power and influence - is never fully explained; at least if it is you probably won't remember, as you'll have been so numbed through sheer disinterest by the end.
In its favour Oculus looks marvellous. The mirror itself exudes a suitably creepy and menacing air of dusty theatricality - the scenes in the auction house storeroom where Kaylie is left alone with it are particularly effective. Even the house where Kaylie and Tim were brought up and where the majority of the drama unfolds, has just the right degree of recognisable suburban affluence and middle American prosperity to make audiences feel at home - before the proceedings are punctuated with occasional, perfunctory old-school frights; what is clearly intended to be one of the climatic shocks is flagged up so far in advance, that the viewer is left spending two thirds of the film asking not if, but when, it's going to happen.
Those who want to see how a haunted mirror story should be done, could do worse than to watch Ealing's Dead of Night (1945) or Amicus' From Beyond the Grave (1974), two classic British terror compendiums which both include stories featuring possessed looking glasses, and which are executed with far superior verve and panache. In comparison Oculus is but a pale reflection.
