Oculus - Movie Review and Thoughts

                                                                 Karen Gillan in Oculus

Starring: Karen Gillan, Brenton Thwaites, and James Lafferty(For like a second.)
Directed by:  Mike Flanagan
Genre: Horror 
Rated: R for terror, violence, some disturbing images and brief language 

"What the hell is going on?" Get used to that phrase, because you'll be saying it to yourself a hell of a lot if you're going to sit through this damn thing. 

Oculus is about Tim Russell(Brenton Thwaites) who goes to some psychiatric hospital because he killed his father when he was 10 years old. After 11 years he get's released. His older sister, Kaylie(Karen Gillan). welcomes him back, but reminds him of a promise he made 11 years ago. A promise to destroy an antique mirror that Kaylie feels is responsible for their parent's deaths. 

I'm a hot ginger! 

Okay, so the paragraph above doesn't even begin to describe this damn movie. Let me try to elaborate:

When Kaylie and Tim were kids, their dad purchased this weird mirror to hang in his home office(PS: From a designer stand point, the mirror looks TERRIBLE with the rest of their shitty furniture! They pretty much deserve what they get for bad taste alone.). Shit starts to get real when the father starts acting withdrawn and stupid, and the mother begins to slowly unravel eventually going cray cray. 

Katee Sackhoff and Rory Cochrane have marital problems.

Kaylie and Tim are witness to all this, and unlike the parents, catch on that it's the creepy mirror hanging in Daddy's office. Eventually the Dad goes crazy and shoots the mother and then goes after Kaylie and Tim. Tim somehow gets the gun and shoots his father dead. Even though the police can clearly see the fucked up shit that went on in this house, they arrest the 10-year-old Tim and commit him to a psychiatric hospital. His sister, Kaylie, stays in the foster system, growing more and more obsessed with proving that it was the creepy mirror that destroyed her family. 

Kaylie grows up, gets together with James Lafferty's character(Who's an antique dealer of some sort.) and finds the mirror at an auction. She borrows the mirror to run experiments on and after Tim is released from the psychiatric place, Kaylie ropes Tim in to helping her prove the mirror is supernatural. 

Yes ladies, that's the One Tree Hill guy no one cares about. 

Hope that makes sense, because making a coherent plot out of the this movie is super hard. Now let's tear this bitch up!

First off, Kaylie sets up this massive operation to catch any activity the mirror might exhibit. This girl has two or more cameras, two computers, TONS of lights, and a bunch of other shit. She then goes on to explain how the mirror operates and how intelligent it is. She then continues to mess with it, even though she KNOWS how horrible it is. You can't cure stupid I guess. 

She's trying to catch any evidence that the mirror is supernatural on tape, yet she goes out of her way explaining that the mirror can manipulate things and make it seem like what you're seeing isn't real or is real. It even shows, early on in her investigation, that the mirror can fuck with the cameras and tapes making it show whatever it wants! WHY ARE YOU STILL DOING THIS!?!?! WHAT'S THE POINT!?!?! Anything you catch on tape is not going to be valid because the crazy mirror is going to make you see what it wants! 

Yeah, stand closer to it! That seems like a brilliant idea!

Tim sees all this shit she's set up and tries to convince her that she's crazy for thinking the mirror is crazy. They waste a good 20 or so minutes arguing about Kaylie's mental stability. If the director had hitched his wagon to that star, this might have saved the movie. I really thought it was going somewhere when Tim and Kaylie were doubting their mental wellness, thinking that maybe they had imagined everything. The movie could have totally been a coming of age tale about accepting what's real and moving on with your life. That could have been a great movie, not a horror movie, but still a great one! 

Alas, it turned out to be a ginormous waste of time. Everyone knows what movie their watching. it's going to a horror movie. The mirror is going to cray cray. Stop trying to make this into a drama and bring out the Crazy Mirror Bitch(More on her later.)! 

Now, let's address the elephant in the room. The big kahuna of problems this movie has. It's straight up confusing as hell! It's like the director was like "Hey! Let's film two separate movies and then mish-mash them together to confuse the dick out of the audience!" Sounds like a solid plan right? WRONG! The entire movie is a colossal mess of flashbacks to Kaylie and Tim's childhood and to the present moment when their doing this idiotic investigation. The transition from past to present is about as subtle as Andy Dick on cocaine. It just suddenly happens and your not sure if you're seeing an illusion or an actual flashback. 

I'm guessing the director probably wanted you to question what was real and what wasn't just like Kaylie and Tim, but for me, it ended up being a big debacle of shit. It took itself WAY too seriously!

This isn't to say there weren't some creepy moments in the movie. There definitely were moments that were straight up SCARY. Let's talk about those!

Crazy Mirror Bitch is a crazy mirror bitch named Crazy Mirror Bitch.

The scariest part of this movie was the Crazy Mirror Bitch. Yes I capitalized that because that is her name. She was fucking scary! When Kaylie and Tim are kids she makes the most appearances. She's first thought to be the woman their father is having an affair with. Apparently she lives in the office and is giving their father awesome BJs. She just randomly shows up throughout the movie and makes me both scared and happy to see her. 

This movie has definite creep factor and it's a fun little movie if you want some scares, but don't expect to understand what's going on. 

Let's talk about the actors and shit. 

The actors did a fairly decent job. Karen Gillan's character, Kaylie, skates the line between being likable and annoying. She played it extremely well and is very hot. Throughout the film I was all like "Heeey! Holla at me!"

Mmmm... Light bulb glass. My favorite flavor of glass. 

Brenton Thwaites plays Tim, and he's okay. Honestly, he was mostly in scenes with Karen Gillan and I was definitely more focused on her more. Sorry not sorry. 

James Lafferty is whatever, but the kid actors who play young Kaylie and Tim are absolutely fantastic! Annalise Basso and Garrett Ryan are stars in their own right and I expect great things from them as they get older. They played their roles with such emotion and had me feeling all the feels. 

Example of great child actors. Please don't screw your lives up!

Katee Sackhoff and Rory Cochrane play Kaylie and Tim's parents. They both give a believable roles as normal, everyday parents who slowly have their marriage and minds unravel. These two are pros and completely own their characters. 

"Ooooh yeeeah! Gimme some o' dat sweet ass human diiack!" 

All in all, the movie is a great one if you want to have the creeps. It's not a great one if you're easily confused, and/or deathly afraid of Crazy Mirror Bitches. 

Until next time, Peace Out.

For more information on Oculus check out their IMDB page.