Off My Shelf: Oculus (2013)

First of all, I guess I have to start by saying that I was shocked when I discovered this movie came out five years ago.



Plot: Several years ago, something awful scary happened to a small family -- and only the daughter and son of the family lived to tell the tale. The son is finally getting out of the asylum, so he and the daughter have twenty-four hours to spend with the catalyst of their horror; a creepy old mirror. Can they defeat the mirror's evil before it drives them both insane?

I thought that the movie Oculus came out last year, and I'd been meaning to watch it since then because people kept saying it was pretty good. (However, I was also under the impression that people in this movie got poked in the eye with pieces of glass, which somewhat discouraged me from seeing it -- I'm not a huge fan of "body horror", as I feel like the discomfort you feel from gruesome things happening to people's bodies isn't quite the same as actual horror-horror. However, the impression that it was mainly body horror (like the thought that this movie came out last year) turned out to be wrong. So! Not to spoil anything, but, like I said, nobody gets poked in the eye in this movie.

(Not pictured in this film).That said, it's not a terrible movie, and probably better than a good portion of the modern horror movies I've seen by an appreciable margin -- which doesn't make it very good, as a good portion of modern horror movies I've seen are straight-up garbage.

Why It Wasn't Entirely Garbage
It wasn't terrible because it had decent acting, and for the first half of the movie, I was relatively interested. Basically, there are two simultaneous stories going on here; one, the re-telling of the fateful time in the past where the family dissolved around this evil mirror; and two, present-day siblings trying to unravel its secrets and defeat it. This was a fun way to tell the story and I appreciated the good acting. There were even some scary moments... at the beginning.

This doesn't happen in the movie.
Why It Wasn't That Great, Either
Okay, the problem here is that -- while it had decent acting, decent effects, and chose a decent structure for relaying the story -- there was never any doubt about what was happening.

"The mirror is making us do scary stuff!" "I totally know that. Why don't we just leave? ...Oh wait, because then there wouldn't be a movie. Never mind."Half the story is watching what played out in the past play out again.... but we already KNOW what happened in the past; there were no enormous revelations to be had. I guess there was kind of a twist in the end as we found out one detail about the past that had previously been withheld, but it didn't substantially change anything -- so it might as well not have happened.

This ALSO does not happen in the movie.Meanwhile, the "present day" story playing out also holds very few surprises. The big question is, "Is the mirror really evil, or are they just crazy?" -- well, it's pretty well explained in the first ten minutes that YES, IT IS AN EVIL MIRROR. There are no bones about it. Again, there's a minor twist in the end -- but the twist just confirms that, yes, the mirror is evil.

There is a scene where someone bites a lightbulb by mistake. It is a lot more underwhelming than you would think and actually doesn't make a lot of sense within the scenario of the film.If there had every been any doubts about that (like, perhaps, if the brother had consistently, throughout the film maintained that the sister was crazy and that he didn't believe in the evil of the mirror anymore) it would have been a bigger switcharoo when the end of the film confirms that the mirror is evil and doing bad stuff. But no -- as I said about ten minutes into the movie the brother is like pretty much convinced -- which makes the confirmation at the end of the film that the mirror is evil a moot point. The ending acts as though it's some kind of major ironic twist (like the end of certain Twilight Zone episodes...)

Hint: Watch the episode Time Enough at Last... That is an ironic twist ending of the variety they were trying for - the type that just gives you an awful feeling in the pit of your stomach. ...But throughout the whole movie they are confirming that the mirror is evil and does bad stuff to people. "The mirror did it!" a person cries at the end... and we're like, "Yeah, I know the mirror did it. ...Wait, that's your ending? THAT'S IT?" The overall feeling they wanted to leave you with was, "Wow! Wasn't THAT ironic? I feel so bad now." but instead I was left with was, "Why did I just watch this movie?"

From the very beginning we already knew the mirror was evil and doing bad stuff, so, um... yeah. Less than halfway through the movie, the tension is pretty much nullified, and everything else that happens feels a bit bloated and filler-y and tension-less. This is probably the biggest thing wrong with the movie -- and that's a pretty big deal in a movie which is all about tension.

Two Things
Afterwards we discussed the movie, and Mr. Hall pointed out the story would have been better if had been cut down to the length of a Twilight Zone episode... and our host observed that the film was actually originally based on a short film. That makes perfect sense, as the movie felt as though it really only had enough material for a half-hour, and that potentially the ending would have been more effective if there had only been half-an-hour of build-up. I'm curioius to see the short film now, to see if our suspicions are confirmed.

The second, and most puzzling thing, is that this movie was produced by WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) films.

Yes, THAT "WWE".I don't know why. I looked for cameos by wrestlers, but they weren't to be had. I guess the folks in charge just liked the script? Or maybe they were pressured to do it by outside sources.

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Ultimately...
As I said, I have seen worse modern horror movies. (*cough* The Conjuring *cough*). At least I spent a little while feeling scared (when the things the mirror did were still mysterious and I thought people might get poked in the eye) and it had nice production values and looked nice.

But in the end, it was bloated to a length that could not maintain the tension the story needed -- and the ending was a non-event. I didn't wind up liking the good parts enough to give it a solid recommendation, and I just wasn't wrapped up in the characters enough to care about what happened to them, so all I'm left with to say about this movie is...

MOSTLY NO.