Surprisingly enough, and admittedly fear is in the eye of the beholder so what scares me might not scare scare you, but even so, Mike Flanagan’s horror movie “Oculus” is a truly scary experience. Ten years before the start of the movie ten year old Tim shot his daddy to death and was institutionalized for his crimes (though since his daddy had just strangled his Mom… well let’s not McGuffin) during a slow burn to insanity and one last terrifying night. So, now an adult, Tim (Brenton Thwaites) is released and is met at the hospital by his sister Kaylie, played by, yes, Dr. Who’s former companion Karen Gillian sporting an American accent.
Kaylie believes her parents were killed by an evil mirror with an Oculus (a sort of circular doorway) to hell from which a very nasty witch comes out to play. The movie takes place on Tim’s first night back forced by his sister to relive that night so she can prove an evil spirit killed her parents. It flashes back to the night ten years prior, but as the evening continues, it becomes harder and harder to figure out what is past and what is present, as the evil presence causes the siblings to hallucinate, a very dangerous little proposition.
The movie seems to take the duo deeper and deeper into the insanity that engulfed their parents and terrified them as children. Speaking of which, Annalise Basso as the young Kaylie is really good and on her way to stardom.
So this is all going to go very wrong of course and it soon does, plants die, cameras are moved, inside the house they are terrified, so they go outside but do they. And that’s in the present. In the past their daddy is having an affair with a ghost and their mother is going round the twist and torture and mayhem are the order of the day.
What makes it work so well is that you can’t feel comfortable with your frights when you don’t know where they are coming. This is a good movie and if you want to be scared go and see it.
Grade: B+
