Review of Oculus (2014) by Michael M — 16 Mar 2016

The most effective horror movie of its type since Sinister. That is a noteworthy qualifier, "of its type". This is a supernatural horror film with family elements and something of a hopeless tone.

Where it's different is that Sinister told us a lot about it's villain Bughuul, but Oculus tells us virtually nothing about the evil mirror at the center of its story. What are the extent of its powers? Why is it doing this? What does it want? We never find out, and for me anyway, that made it all the more effective.

It made things unpredictable which added to the paranoia of the film. It takes a while for things to really start getting scary, but once they do they really do. Some horror movies are roller coasters, giving you scares and then calming down and on and on it goes.

This ones more of a steady incline. It actually takes a while for you to really to figure out if the mirror even is evil or if these characters are just nuts. It slowly builds its tension until it finally reaches its brutal climax.

I'm not saying all horror movies need to play it this way, but when they do it is just as effective (if not moreso) than the roller coaster style. I also really liked the two leads in this. Their relationship as siblings was believable, their tension was believable, and I liked that they were actually smart.

The sister has clearly put a lot of thought into what she's doing. She almost reminded me of the characters from Scream, who are aware of the genre conventions. Because of this there was never really a point where they'd do something I found stupid.

They would do things that I didn't want them to do on occasion, but even then I understood why. Bottom line, Oculus is one of the best horror movies of this generation. It's scary, uncomfortable, and it's got good characters I actually cared about.