Oculus Review

Posted 10 years ago by myetvmedia

Award winning director Mike Flanaghan (Absentia) Oculus is everything a horror film should be. Subdued, perfectly timed, with a fantastic soundtrack and an amazing hook, blending multiple genres into one fantastic. Part The Shining, part Eternal Darkness, this is an absolute must see for anyone bored with the gorefests masquerading as horror nowadays.

Karen Gillan plays Kayleigh, who witnessed her father (Rory Cochrane) abuse and murder her mother (Katee Sackoff) before trying to kill her and her brother Tim. (Brenton Thwaites) Years later, her investigations have led her to an unusual conclusion. Everything that happened was because of a mysterious mirror that has left a trail of bizarre deaths and abuse stretching back at least 400 years. So she steals the mirror and brings it and her brother home to exonerate her father and take revenge on the thing that destroyed her family. Tim thinks she’s completely insane, that their father was a psychotic scumbag and the mirror is just a mirror. The two clash, with the scientific Tim rationalising everything, while Kayleigh sets up cameras and prepares for war. Over the course of the night, reality fractures, long buried memories come to light, and all kinds of nasty things go bump in the night.

This film is amazing. Director Mike Flanaghan knows when less is more, and that sometimes the audience needs to see someone coughing up lumps of bloody meat. He hits the balance perfectly, letting the tension build and build until giving us a nice spatter or a damp thud of shredded flesh hitting the floor. Touching on themes of mental health, body image, domestic abuse and adultery, it hits everything perfectly. It also intentionally avoids the found footage genre which is becoming more and more prevalent, even though it could have very easily have gone that route. It does have a tendency to over-rely on jump scares, and Gillan’s accent does strange things, but these are extremely minor problems in an otherwise rock solid film. The casting is impeccable, Sackoff in particular is amazing as the stressed mother who devolves into little more than an attack dog. And when reality starts to fracture, and past and present cross, at no point does it feel overwhelming or confusing. And like the best horror films, it ends with a nice, wet splat.

It’s amazing. Flanaghan has an amazing future ahead. What more can be said? Go see it.

Donal O’connor

Shown at this year’s TIFF13 : Toronto International Film Festival.

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