Film Review: Richly Complex ‘Oculus’ is Also Scary as Hell

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CHICAGO – The affect of horror works in five basic ways. There’s the sense of Dislocation where the lead character suddenly loses bearing, becomes unsure of what where or even who they are. Next is Dread, which is the sense that something awful is coming. Terror is simply the reaction to there being no escape from that something awful when the character s confronted with it head on. Disgust, perhaps the most widely criticized aspect of the genre, brings us back to our own sense of uncleanness, or discomfort at the possibility of being rendered abject. Finally, Irony, points back to things like  human limitations, ideas of order, justice, chance, destiny, and cosmology. Few horror films present all these modes. Oculus burns through about four of the above in relatively short order. In short, it is scary as hell and richly complex. 

Rating: 4.5/5.0

The film tells the tale of a young man being released from a mental hospital who goes to stay with his sister. Little does he realize she is determined to prove him innocent of the crime for which he was incarcerated. To do this she must also prove that an ornate antique mirror, which had hung in their father’s study, harbors a supernatural force which is responsible for dozens of deaths during it’s four hundred year existence. As he unwillingly embarks on helping her, their past and present become blurred, calling into question the nature of memory, and the way in which family ties bind. 

As effective as it will be for many Director Mike Flanagan’s narrative shifts so often between the past and the present that it’s bound to lose some viewers. But Flanagan is up to some deep stuff. It’s impossible to see those juxtaposed images of children and the adults they became without beginning to wonder if the film is a neatly disguised ultra-unsettling psychological drama. But the intra family violence seems too real, too much like the horror stories we all read in the newspaper too just dismiss as another tragedy in suburbia and the willingness Flanagan has to get visceral with his shocks carries them beyond the jump scare. Oculus is horrific in a way too few horror films dare to be. 

Continue reading for Dave Canfield’s full review of “Oculus”

Kaylie (Karen Gillan) in ‘Oculus’
Photo credit: Relativity Media

Continue reading for Dave Canfield’s full review of “Oculus”