“Oculus” was directed by Mike Flanagan, and written by Mike Flanagan and Jeff Howard (based on a short screenplay by Mike Flanagan and Jeff Seidman). It stars Karen Gillan, Brenton Thwaites, Katee Sackhoff, Rory Cochrane, Annalise Basso, and Garrett Ryan.

Oculus is a movie about a haunted mirror. There are plenty for whom that would be reason enough to avoid the film. Perhaps anticipating this, the film relies on visceral shocks and bases most of its horror in violent human behavior, rather than the supernatural.

There are times when this is reasonably effective. There are jump scares in this film. Not a ton thankfully, but they’re in there.

The film opens with Tim Russell getting out of a psych ward, having finally taken responsibility for killing his father ten or so years prior, after he (the father) killed his wife. His sister, Kaylie, is convinced that neither Tim nor their father is at all to blame for whatever horrible events transpired, and that it is the haunted mirror their father had in his office that caused everything to go to hell. There are long, tedious conversations about whether or not anything supernatural is at blame here. These are so frustrating to watch because we know that of course the supernatural is to blame. Kaylie sets up some video cameras and sets out on a night-long experiment to prove their sanity and clear their father’s name (as well as Tim’s). Throughout the film, we alternate between past and present, and see what exactly happened years ago, bit-by-bit.

The part of the film set in the past is undeniably stronger. And while the way things escalate isn’t especially original or unexpected for this sort of film, it is an effectively grotesque descent into hell. It also includes the occasional moment of comedy in the behavior of the rapidly losing it father (this may or may not be intentional, but I’ll take what I can get).

While these scenes could certainly sustain their own feature length film, the same cannot be said for the events of the present. This aspect of story is quite slight, though there are a few shocks and jolts along the way. There’s a great moment where Kaylie bites into an apple and then realizes that it is actually a lightbulb (though they immediately undercut this by making the whole thing another hallucination).

Effectively, the mirror makes one delusional and insane, which is what leads to all of the film’s most gruesomely effective moments. “Oculus” plays fast and loose with reality and fantasy, and there are a handful of times where we aren’t immediately sure if what we are watching is really happening. In a similar vein, the transitions between past and present grow more seamless and transparent as the film goes on. This creates an interesting texture, but director Mike Flanagan never goes all the way with it to create anything surrealistic or truly nightmarish. There’s no actual ambiguity about what is or isn’t real. The closest we get is a momentary feeling of confusion followed by an explicit indication just how real what we are seeing is.

There is fun to be had with Oculus, and some scares of the primal, visceral variety. It is also refreshingly light on gore without seeming to shy away from it. However, it is flawed in that it fails to commit to its central conceit of the blurriness between fantasy and reality. There’s a better movie in there somewhere.

– Anthony Calamunci