The Countdown To Halloween Day 25 Oculus (2013)

 

About a week left until the big day and we have Mike Flanagan back again.  Oculus stars Karen Gillian (Doctor Who and The Guardians of the Galaxy) and Brenton Thwaites (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and Maleficent) as a pair of siblings.  Tim (Thwaites) has just been released from a mental institute that he was committed to after his parents died when he was 11 years old.  He was blamed for killing his parents, but his sister Kaylie (Gillian) believe the deaths were caused by a supernatural force inside a cursed mirror.  For ten years Tim was coming to terms with the fact that he did indeed kill his parents and nothing paranormal occurred.

Shortly after he is released Kaylie gets the mirror back and brings it to their family home where she keeps it locked in a special room complete with a fail-safe to protect them from the mirror’s power.  Also starring is Katee Sackhoff (Halloween: Resurrection and Riddick) as Marie, Tim and Kaylie’s mother, and Rory Cochrane (Dazed and Confused and Empire Records) is their father Alan.  The film is told in two different time periods including the present when Tim is first released and ten years ago when their parents die.  Playing Marisol Chavez is Kate Siegel who is in just about everything Flanagan does since she is his wife.  

This was filmed before they were married and might be where they first met and saw their love bloom.  Eww!  Anyway, Marisol is ghost with mirrors for eyes, and she seduces Alan.  What happens after all this is a little convoluted and what started off strong struggles to pull off the stories ending.  I liked Oculus but I didn’t love it.  I mean, why the hell would Kaylie want to get the same mirror that she thinks is responsible for her parents’ deaths and then mess with it?  It sounds insane but that’s exactly what happens.  The film is an adaption of Flanagan’s earlier short film Oculus: Chapter 3 – The Man with the Plan.

I watched that several years ago and didn’t care for it very much so I took a chance that the full-length movie would be better.  And it is, but not by much.  The movie is filled with creepy imagery but as I said the switching between the two time periods eventually gets to be too much and it gets annoying.  Instead of making me feel sorry for Gillian’s character she just ends up pissing me off.  If you love your brother, who just got released from a psychiatric hospital, you don’t reintroduce him to the exact thing that sent him there in the first place.  Not Flanagan’s best but not due to lack of effort, the story just didn’t do it for me.  I will give this three wilted houseplants out of five.