It's upsetting. I've written this review three times already. The first two were supposed to be in the point of view of the "black guy who always shouts in the theater when he watches horror movies." Then, when I was unsuccessful at not making it the most racist thing on the internet, I chuckled to myself quietly and erased the whole thing. It's not like Oculus deserves a different review or a blatantly prejudice review because it was a bad movie... it's just that all these horror movie reviews I do seem to be the same. A. Talk about previous horror movies that are good. B. Say that this movie could've been among them, but fell short. C. Talk about horror movies that suck animal balls. D. Say this movie is much better than them. D. Give brief plot synopsis. E. Talk about everything that was wrong with it. F. Then, clear that up with a "don't get me wrong here..." moment where you explain that it actually was kinda decent even though it seems to contradict the last three paragraphs of the review. G. Give it a mediocre grade and move on to the next review. Let's just skip to D.
Yeah... okay. Oculus was a mediocre movie that should've been a hell of a lot better. Not that it wasn't written well, but, in fact, it may have been written too well. The movie actually may have been too clever for itself. Siblings Kaylie and Tim Russell have seen some shit in their day. Their father bought an antique mirror, hung it in his home office, slowly went crazy because there's some evil that got trapped in the mirror that apparently gets its jollies off by mind fucking people to death. This makes their father go crazy, brutally kill their mother and essentially kill himself (kinda... I won't spoil it). Fast forward eleven years, as Tim is released from the mental hospital, Kaylie picks him up giving him the news that she's reclaimed the mirror and plans to have the two of them destroy it that night all the while proving that it was the mirror that caused the murders and not their father. Obviously, all does not go as planned. The mirror has the propensity to get a little pissed off when it's threatened. So, it changes the perceptions of all involved. It intertwines past and present memories and images into the house. Kaylie and Tim aren't sure what's real and what's not. Until finally, it leads up to an ending that, I'm not going to lie, most will see coming.
Now, the concept and the build up in Oculus is great. It's a clever twist on a haunted house sub-genre of horror. It added a bit of mystery and tension to the horror. I was involved the entire time. I was trying to figure it all out in my head as I was watching, hoping that the resolve would give me something that I couldn't possibly fathom. Unfortunately, I didn't get that resolve. I was mind-fucked for a good hour and twenty minutes, until the last ten arrived and then I was just kinda left hanging with horror movie blue balls. It reminded me a lot of the film Sinister where the mystery and the build up was so great that they weren't able to capitalize on their promise of a big finish and both films just kind of fizzled out. The ending to Oculus wasn't entirely a cop out, but it was expected. Very early in the film I called how the movie was going to end, hoping entirely that I wasn't right. Alas, it ended almost exactly as I thought. And I'm no horror movie oracle, trust me. You'll be able to do the same thing.
What the filmmakers do well is the build up. They're able to interweave time so that the audience has to sit, and pay close attention to what is going on and where and when in time it is happening. The cuts from past to present in the midst of pure tension is quite good. However, when we finally become privy to the fact that nothing may be real in the first place, we kind of distance ourselves further from the narrative. If nothing is real, then we're unable to get afraid. We're unable to get excited or shocked because it's always there in the back of the mind that it didn't actually happen. Or did it? Well, now this is too much of the guessing game that I'm going to give up, sit back and wait for an explanation at the end that won't actually provide any answers whatsoever.
The film is also not that scary. Kudos to the filmmakers for not relying on cheap jump scares or gore, but because the mystery was so deep and answers were so sought after, I forgot to get scared. I wanted to get scared. There were moments where I was preparing myself for some awful shit to happen, but it never did. I was interested for the most part, sure, but I never really had that heart-pounding fear that I was looking for when I purchased my ticket.
This may be a bit of a spoiler, so if you don't want anything spoiled for you skip to the next paragraph. That being said, I'm having a hard time with this new trend in horror movies today where the ending of the film is not allowed to be happy. Most horror movies today make you care about a character, follow them through their terrifying journey, give the illusion of a happy ending until one last fucked up thing happens and everyone is dead or about to be dead. No one in horror movies anymore (save for The Conjuring) is allowed to have a happy ending anymore. Can we just once let someone live? Or can we just once not screw up someone's life so badly that there's no point in living? Can we just once let our protagonists solve the mystery and live happily ever after?? Am I the only one here? I'm not saying that everyone in Oculus is killed off and there's nothing good about the ending. Because that doesn't happen. But, to say it was a happy ending would be far from the truth.
Oculus is not a bad Redbox or Netflix find, once it's released. But, it's not the terrifying take-your-girlfriend-and-watch-her-nearly-sob-with-fear-while-squeezing-your-hand-so-tight-a-blood-vessel-may-or-may-not-have-been-popped kind of horror movie in theaters. It's a great premise, with a better build up, and a flat, unsatisfying, predictable, and disappointing ending.
C+
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