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Not much of a sight to see

Last Updated 12 April 2014, 20:11 IST

Oculus **

English (U/A)

Director: Mike Flanagan

Cast: Karen Gillan, Brenton Thwaites

A truly terrifying horror movie leaves you with that lingering sense of fear long after you've left the movie theatre. 

The kind of uneasiness that Psycho (1960) evoked, making one double check that you’re alone in the shower; or 2002’s The Ring, that had one look at mirrors and television screens with an irrational dread.

Oculus tries to perturb a viewer by depicting the psychological torment of its characters, only to make it just above the line of being an intolerable horror film. 

Director Mike Flanagan does a passable job with Oculus’ screenplay, by involving an interspersed plot from the past and present to the point that a viewer would understand, at least minimally.

Kaylie Russel (Karen Gillan) is orphaned along with her brother Tim (Brenton Thwaites) in the initially unclear catastrophic murder of her parents. At the age of 10, Tim recuperates in a psychiatric hospital for eleven whole years. Meanwhile, Kaylie, who believes that her parents' deaths were caused by the supernatural effects surrounding a particular antique mirror, gathers evidence to support her convoluted beliefs. 

With memories of the traumatic events that led to his parents death successfully repressed, Tim is discharged from the hospital. 

Kaylie tries to refresh his memories and convince him that their family experienced something more than just their dad’s secret affair going awry; attempting to make him help her destroy the evil entity that is supposedly housed in the mirror.

The abstruse plot and antithetical characters leave a viewer vacillating between believing Kaylie’s haunted mirror theory, or psychiatric hospital dischargee Tim’s cheating, psychotic father story.

Eventually, the plot proves to be long-drawn-out and may be taxing for a viewer. Especially, if instant, fast-paced horror is expected. 

The horror in this movie, if any, is late blooming and arrives mainly after the midpoint of its run-time. The plot may have tried to achieve maximum impact through its simplicity, but it seems to have stepped on the brakes a tad too much.

At a pace that is not what an average viewer would be terrified by, this movie can be passed up. For horror movie fanatics, like those who enjoyed 1997’s Funny Games, Oculus will succeed to impress. Not so much if you haven’t heard of Funny Games.

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(Published 12 April 2014, 20:11 IST)

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