Review of Oculus (2014) by Ahmedaiman9999 — 13 Sep 2018

With its muddled narration, disorganized storytelling, choppy editing, distracting fast pace, and tons of ineffective cheap jump scares, I found the first act so messy and scrubby that I was about to stop watching the rest of the movie. Fortunately, almost everything got better after this unbearable 30 minutes, especially the editing which became one of the movie's merits notably when the movie shifts consistently between the past and the present. What didn't get better is the use of jump scares. Literally, there's no single jump scare that worked for me. That being said, Oculus is a quite scary movie due to its creepy atmosphere, brilliant visual structure, and seemingly nonsensical rules that would turn out to be very cogent. By that I mean due to Mike Flanagan's creative vision who directed and co-wrote the movie's screenplay. All the performance are fine, particularly the kids, but Annalise Basso's performance as Young Kaylie is what stands out for me. She is such a talented young actress.

The characters of Kaylie and Tim have some reasonable depth, and the developments of the relationship between the two siblings raised a surprisingly interesting dilemma.

The sound mixing and editing are top-notch, the thing that made some scary scenes so effective.

Honestly, the ending isn't quite satisfying, and it made a sequel required, which we plainly won't get, but at least it didn't ruin the movie.

(6.