Horror movie review: Oculus

As per usual, I saw Oculus last night. It comes out in theaters everywhere today. While I always have high hopes for horror movies (I go on opening night and sacrifice a full nights’ sleep), they usually suck (lately none as badly as Mama or Sinister, which Kaybe loves. I just don’t get it). Fortunately for me, Oculus lives up to it’s 72% Rotton Tomatoes ranking. It’s horrifying.

Kaylie (Karen Gillan) and Tim Russell (Brenton Thwaites) are struggling to pull their lives back together and move on when Tim is released from a psychiatric facility 11 years after their parents’ brutal murders. Tim wants to quietly return to society, forgetting the horrors from years before, while Kaylie is determined to confront the evil mirror she believes is responsible for the destruction of her family. She brings the mirror and Tim into the family’s former home and calamity ensues.

Look at that bloody neck

One of the things I love so much about this flick is the timeline. It constantly changes back and forth between present day and eleven years previous, but the viewer rarely knows if the timelines are interacting, which timeline the characters are actually seeing, or if the actions happening to the older and younger versions of Kaylie and Tim are overlapping. All of this successfully lends to the unease and tension present throughout the movie.

This hairstyle is weird

It was so scary, one of my friends who came to the theater with me left halfway through (she didn’t know it was a horror movie, but I still feel like she’d have just laughed her way through the scary parts if it had been Mama). I’m sad she missed out on the ending because it was a good one. Unlike most horror movies (I watch a ton of them) events didn’t wrap up nicely and ruin everything. There’s no happily ever after here, guys. I think horror movie addicts, such as myself, will feel that this ending isn’t one we’ll have to forget about in order the like this film.

My recommendation is to shell out the $10-14 to see it in the theaters. I prefer Williamsburg Cinemas in Williamsburg where they don’t have jalpenos, search you and harass me every time I bring Chico.