Oculus

OCULUS

Director : Mike Flanagan

Year : 2014

Genre : Horror

Rating : ****

 

 

Based on his critically acclaimed short film 'Oculus : Chapter 3 - The Man With The Plan', the similarly titled 'Oculus' is a time bending, mind bending and genre bending psychological chiller from director Mike Flanagan. Starring 'Doctor Who's Karen Gillan, the film tells the story of two siblings who endeavor to discover the hideous truth about a mysterious antique mirror; a mirror that they believe caused the death of their parents 11 years before. After buying the mirror at a local auction, Kaylie (Gillan) and her brother Tim (Brenton Thwaites) set up surveillance cameras and other modes of detection around the cursed object in an attempt to prove once and for all that the mirror is supernatural and  that it caused the bloody deaths of their mother and father. But as their investigation continues long into the night, the two become more and more unhinged as the mirror slowly releases it's violent and manipulative capabilities.

Flipping between the present and the past with unabated relish, Flanagan delights in scrambling his audiences heads with a number of highly elaborate narrative developments and masterfully edited parallel plot lines. Characters meet shadows of their younger selves, the future seems to replay itself in a fashion eerily similar to the past and multiple characters are even forced to see and react to things which aren't really there, leading to numerous moments of horrific violence and unbelievably creepy scenarios. In fact, for a great deal of 'Oculus', we do not know if the strange events taking place on screen are indeed manifestations of the mirrors diabolical powers or made up scenarios from the imaginations of the two damaged protagonists.and this gives the film an unnerving sense of discomfort and confusion; an atmosphere accentuated by Karen Gillan's fantastically neurotic and obsessed central performance and The Newton Brothers mesmeric underscoring. 

Much like 'The Shining', 'Oculus' drapes itself in a suffocating air of mystery and intrigue and while this may prove to be movies ultimate undoing at the bottle fed box office of today, I am delighted to see that a director still has the strength of his convictions to make a horror film which is undeniably strange and unashamedly unique. Creepy, shocking, disorientating, gruesome, claustrophobic and totally brilliant, 'Oculus' is a much needed breath of fresh air in an otherwise stagnating genre.