Review of Oculus (2013) by Torion O — 15 Oct 2018

Ehhh... the ending left off on a rather cheap note. I decided to watch this because I recently finished watching The Haunting of Hill House which had excellent direction also by Mike Flanagan and I wanted more of that same type of horror.

I recognized some of the same elements, particularly the misunderstood family, blending of past and present, and unreliable narration. Flanagan's TV horror The Haunting of Hill House, pulled these elements off much better because it had the benefit of longevity which is compatible with the pacing required for such elements.

As it is in the movie, the constant swapping between past and present, while somewhat well done, is overused, and the unreliability of anything kind of makes any tension there is superficial. If the protagonists literally can't have a coherent state of mind in any part of the primary story it simply becomes frustrating because you realize no matter what they do it's not going to matter.

It's especially frustrating because this renders the protagonists without any autonomy in a very cheap way. What I mean by cheap is that the influence of the mirror, which is somewhat similar to the one ring in The Lord of the Rings, can just pick and choose what anyone sees at any moment, even to the extent of erasing people and things that are in actuality there from the current person's perspective.

And that's the way the movie ends (spoilers), the guy "Timbo" decides to break the mirror and conveniently doesn't see his sister standing in front of the mirror. With a tweaked story this may have been better pulled off with the way it ended but more along the lines of he was actually crazy, but since schizophrenia or whatever doesn't kick in so selectively in two people simultaneously the only real option (in fictional movie world anyway) is they are being manipulated by the mirror.

Which makes it all just... cheap. I can't say I didn't enjoy it, but it definitely could've been better.