Here's another one from the producers of SINISTER, OCULUS, a
2013 horror flick directed by Mike Flanagan. OCULUS tells the tale of a brother
and sister who are separated as kids when their father murders their mother.
The brother holds a gun on Dad, and Dad forces him to pull the trigger, killing
himself and scarring the kid for life. Because he's "shot his Dad,"
the brother gets sent to a psychiatric hospital, while the sister grows up
free.
See, the thing I glossed over is that the kids think a
sinister mirror in the Dad's office caused all this shit to go down. By the
time the brother gets out of the hospital, he realizes this is ridiculous and
just figures Dad was crazy. But, the sister has spent all her time growing up
researching the offending mirror, and is more convinced than ever that it's the
culprit and must be destroyed.
One of the coolest things about this movie is the methodical
way the sister goes about destroying the mirror, and also attempting to prove
its super natural qualities. She sets up cameras, has failsafe schedules and
stuff, complete with alarms. She's not taking any chances. So many horror
movies rely on characters being borderline retarded that whenever there's stuff
like this in a flick, it's a nice change of pace.
The other cool thing is the concept: I've never seen a
killer mirror movie before, so props for originality. And, the concept is so
perfect: the idea that a mirror could mess with your perception so much as to
eventually lead to your death is pretty sweet.
Karen Gillan and Brenton Thwaites play the brother and
sister as adults and Annalise Basso and Garrett Ryan play them as kids. All
four actors are great, especially Karen Gillan, who projects intelligence and
no-nonsense even while dealing with ridiculously supernatural goings-on. Rory
Cochrane and Katee Sackhoff play Mom and Dad, and they're around more than
you'd think, since the movie frequently jumps back and forth between past and
present.
So, OCULUS and SINISTER have similar credits and are made in
a kind of similar style, but if you have to see one, choose OCULUS.
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