Oculus Movie Review 329

Oculus is a 2013 horror movie directed by Mike Flanagan and starring Karen Gillan and Brenton Thwaites.

The movie is about a mirror called the Lasser Glass. This mirror was owned by the Russell family. The father, Alan(Rory Cochrane) and his wife Marie(Katee Sackhoff) buy the mirror and it isn't long before strange things happen in the house. Their children, Tim and Kayleigh notice that the mirror is making their parents act oddly. Alan starts to spend more and more time with the mirror and the kids see a strange woman with him. The mother starts to come unglued too and the father locks her up. He turns nasty and the kids are threatened by him. He tries to kill them, so Tim shoots him in self defence. He ends up being taken away to a psychiatric institution. Kayleigh is put into foster care.

Cut to 11 years later and the adult Tim(Thwaites) is released from the institution. He is determined to get on with his life. His sister Kayleigh(Gillan) is obsessed with the mirror and she gets it on loan from the auction house where she works. She wants to prove that the mirror has ghostly powers and she wants to face it once and for all. She has everything set up and she brings Tim with her to their house where it all happened. She tries to get the mirror to come alive and she has a trap set to smash it if it gets too powerful. Strange things happen to them and the mirror has an evil spirit in it called Marisol. The mirror messes with the two siblings and it has a tragic outcome. The mirror makes Tim kill Kayleigh. He doesn't realise that he has done it until it was too late. It has tricked him and he is taken away by the cops. He insists that he is not guilty of it, but the cops are not convinced. As he is taken away, he sees his family as ghosts in the house. The mirror has them now.

This film was entertaining. It was by no means original, but there were parts of it that I liked. There are some jumpy moments and some decent scares, but I have to say that it was not brilliant. I will give it a 6/10.