Writer-director Mike Flanagan lucked out when he got the chance to expand his $1,500 short OCULUS into a feature, with Karen Gillan (Amy Pond from DR WHO) in the lead and Katee Sackhoff (BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, SHERIFF LONGMIRE) in a supporting role. Unfortunately, some shorts are better off left that way.
The plot is embarrassingly simple. Tim (Brenton Thwaites), a young man committed to a mental institution after shooting his father dead as a young boy (in self defence, pop having killed mommy) is greeted on discharge by his sister, Kaylie (Gillan) who has a surprise for him. Remember that mirror that hung in their house? She bought it at auction with her rich boyfriend. Now she plans to destroy the evil spirit within it for good.
At which point, Tim should have telephoned his psychiatrist and said, ‘you locked up the wrong kid, my sister is totally wacko.’ (This of course is an American film; in the UK we say ‘doolally’.) Blood as they say is thicker than water – or in the case, just thick. Tim decides to stay with Kaylie and prepare to set off the elaborate mirror shattering trick - it involves an anvil, possibly made by Acme since this is a Warner Bros. release, should something inexplicable appear. Kaylie has set up a whole bunch of recording devices – she’s seen the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY films – to ensure that any anomaly is logged. Moreover, there are alarms every forty five minutes to change the tapes.
Why is Kaylie so convinced that the mirror should have been sold with a ‘buyer-beware’ sign? Because she managed to trace its history, having done a ‘who do you think you’ve killed?’ number on it. Now I’ve seen enough episodes of ANTIQUES ROADSHOW to conclude that this information would be extremely difficult to come by. Mirrors, unlike houses or paintings, don’t come with deeds. But belief is there to be suspended.
Much of the film consists of flashbacks to mommy (Sackhoff) and pop (Rory Cochrane) moving into the house with their two young kids playing with toy guns all the time as the mirror takes hold. The film is marginally interesting if you consider its subtext. ‘Magic mirror’ films generally explore ideas of vanity and youth – think of the Evil Queen in SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARVES or Lord Farquaad in SHREK. They affect individuals who believe that the external is everything. ‘Magic mirrors’ can also affect those who believe in the solidity of their surroundings – in EVIL DEAD, a characters touches the mirror which suddenly becomes liquid. Mirrors can fail to reflect ethereal beings – vampires cannot be seen in them, since they are immortal, beyond the need of mirror to check the ageing process (I don’t know why you need a stake to kill a vampire, just mess up their hair and watch them suffer). They can also show things that cannot be seen with the naked eye. Here, youth and vanity don’t play a part in the story. The father suffers because (perhaps) he doesn’t pay attention to the games his children play.
Characters start seeing things that cause them to do harm – the ‘I didn’t think that was a knife, I thought it was a banana’ sort of thing. If you think a couple of kids can defeat an ancient evil, you haven’t seen anything like the number of horror films that I have. (And I’m not even an aficionado.)
OCULUS is frankly tedious, or if you prefer, a sight for bored eyes. One good point: the Scottish born Gillan manages a creditable American accent and put me in mind of Jennifer Lawrence; she can compete for roles. There are not enough characters to do the stupid things that people generally do in horror movies, but as in bad horror flicks, you feel one step ahead of them, even as we get to the inevitable bloody denouement. Oh, and at the risk of missing the obvious, it is neither scary nor pleasurably suspenseful.
Reviewed at Cineworld Haymarket, London (Screen One), Wednesday 4 June, 19:00 (press) screening
