I’m not the world’s biggest fans of scary movies. Mostly because I’m a huge scardy-cat; the last one I saw was Sinister and I spent most of the movie with my fingers lodged in my ears (I find that the soundtrack is usually the most terrifying bit) so it’d have to take something special for me to willingly sit through one. Alone.

In this case, that something special was Doctor Who‘s Karen Gillan, who seems committed to making a mark across the pond (pun intended). I was totally prepared to ignore this film until my friend Nicole mentioned over brunch that Amy Pond is starring in a Hollywood scary movie. How was I to pass that up, right?

So here’s my round up of Mike Flannagan (Absentia)’s entry to the Toronto Film Festival, Oculus.

Please note that there may be spoilers. Read at your own risk.

THE STORY:

Tim Russell (Brenton Thwaites – Maleficent) is released from court mandated psychiatric detention on his twenty-first birthday after his therapist declares him to be fit for reintroduction to society. He is picked up by older sister Kaylie (Karen Gillan – Doctor Who) who works in an auction firm with her fiancé Michael (James Lafferty – One Tree Hill). Things seem perfectly normal at first until we learn why Tim was placed in an asylum in the first place.

It turns out that eleven years prior, the two siblings, (Annalisse Basso – The Red Road and Garrett Ryan – Insidious: Chapter 2), escaped their parents’ – (Katee Sackhoff – Battlestar Galactica and (Rory Cochrane – Empire Records) – attempts to kill them. Through a series of flashbacks, Tim and Kaylie recall that their parents only started behaving weirdly when they acquired an antique mirror and hung it up on their father’s office. The exact same mirror that showed up in Kaylie’s action house, in fact.

THE GOOD:

1. The Kids. Hands down, they had the scariest scenes and things got exponentially creepier when they were in frame. I especially liked Annalisse Basso’s performance because through her, you understand why Karen Gillan was acting the way she was. Garrett Ryan’s performance was also especially powerful during the film’s climax. It’s amazing how these two kids basically carried the brunt of the movie’s weight.
2. Karen Gillan was perfect for the role because she had that crazy spark in her eye needed to convey her character’s desperation and anger. Of course it helped that she’s extraordinarily gorgeous so yeah, the crazy is more palatable but whenever I try to think of another actress playing Kaylie, I come up short because I don’t think anybody else can nail that balance between crazed and scared right. Also her American accent blew me away. Again, what are they feeding the British (or in this case Scottish) actors out there?
3. That the scares mostly intellectual. I haven’t seen that many scary movies from the last decade but the last three I saw definitely relied more on the startle (or gulat) factor than anything else. This story was made all the more scary because you see that the characters know that they are being fucked over so the tension mainly comes from the thought ‘Oh, shit, what is the demon going to do to them next?’
4. The relative lack of blood. I liked that there weren’t a lot of gore – yet another thing that makes this film different from the others. There were disgusting scenes, yeah, but because they weren’t bathed in blood, the effect of seeing a hand with fingernails torn off is more chilling.
5. There were no needless gratified sex/cleavage/shirtless scenes. Thank God. Aside from this little ditty over here, everybody pretty much stayed covered up.

THE BAD:

1. The slow pace. Personally I didn’t mind because I think the prolongation added to the build, but really, things didn’t start getting creepy until the second hour mark, and things only really picked up during the last twenty minutes.
2. What happens to Tim now? I hate that he has to live through yet another horrifying experience. I didn’t know the character very well but I’m very much emotionally invested.
3. Things got a bit confusing towards the end. Or at least, I got confused towards the end. People were popping all over the place and I sort of couldn’t follow where which character was where.

THE UGLY:

1. The lack of a backstory. I’m nitpicking here, but I’m still waiting for an explanation as to who the hell this Marisol lady is and why was she in the mirror in the first place. Seriously, what’s her deal?

All in all I found Oculus to be a good movie and an especially good scary movie. It distanced itself from the other Hollywood churn outs by taking the scares from the mind, rather than one’s startle reflexes. Performances were great over all and everything was layered nicely so that in the end, things made sense. Things were slow to take off but personally I didn’t mind; that the film makers took their time actually added to the mindfuckery.

THE VERDICT: 7.8/10. Watch on the big screen for maximized scariness.

*All photos are lifted from the film’s IMDB page.