Oculus: Seeing is Not Necessarily Believing

Outside of an archaeological or architectural context, the word oculus means "an eye," which is significant for a film genre that relies so heavily on what viewers see – or, more specifically, what is suddenly and often times shockingly seen after great delay – in order to construct its environment.  To get lost in a horror film, you must submit to its rules, and those rules more often than not state that seeing is believing, that tension will be built in that space that exists between what we know to be true and what the characters are yet to discover: that the dead bodies are a result of a psycho killer in the basement of the house down the street; that the furniture is being repositioned by a malevolent entity; or that it's not animals responsible for those strange sounds in the woods.

Enter Oculus, a psychological horror film that tries to reverse engineer that process by beginning with its main characters having already made their gruesome discovery 11 years earlier.  At least, that's what Kaylie Russell (Karen Gillen) believes anyway.  When she and her younger brother, Tim (Brenton Thwaites), were kids, their father (Rory Cochrane) murdered their mother (Katee Sackhoff) after she had had a slow psychotic breakdown. Tim, defending his big sister, murdered their father and spent the next 11 years as a ward of the state, his psychological state ever being questioned while Kaylie bounced around through foster families. 

As Tim remembers it all, the devolving of the family was rooted in dad's infidelity and mom's fragility, but Kaylie remembers things a bit differently.  As Kaylie remembers it, the family's downfall can be traced back to the purchase of an antique mirror that's allegedly been responsible for over 40 deaths in its four centuries of existence.  Ever since the entity allegedly possessing the mirror killed off her parents, Kaylie has vowed to destroy it, finally getting her chance 11 years later when the cursed object comes up for sale through her boyfriend's auction business.  Tim, seeing his first freedom and doctor-endorsed clean bill of health in over a decade, just wants a return to normalcy and put the past behind him.  Kaylie claims to have the same goal, but which past is the one she's trying to put behind her?

Despite being a film about a haunted mirror, Oculus gets points for trying to be more than just a series of bathroom medicine cabinet "gotcha!" moments.  Yes, co-writer/director Mike Flanagan does include a few sight gags of things appearing in the mirror that aren't seemingly there in real life, but he and co-writer Jeff Howard are more primarily concerned with exploring the idea that seeing isn't necessarily – or shouldn't be – believing.  After all, a mirror doesn't depict a reality of its own, it merely reflects the reality that's already there, and it's the mind of the observer that interprets that reality.  Skinny people can see themselves as overweight despite any objective evidence and people commonly hailed as beautiful may only be able to see glaring physical imperfections, so how much could recollection and belief be skewed when viewed through the lens of 11 years and intense psychological trauma?

The fact that the Russell siblings approach the same history with a different mindset – Kaylie believing supernatural involvement, Tim believing otherwise – provides the opportunity for the filmmakers to play their cards pretty tight to the chest in regards to how haunted the mirror may or may not be, jumping back and forth between the past and present to see how the Russell family gradually devolved and how Kaylie and Tim are both still trying to grapple with it.  The fact that Kaylie believes so vehemently in her own hypothesis and that Tim is so close minded to what has seemingly become his sister's obsession means Flanagan can play both sides of the argument against each other and let the audience decide if what we're seeing is really the evidence of a malevolent spirit or just the degradation of a family with a history of mental illness.  After a while even the introduction of what would seem to be physical manifestations of the spirit can be called into question because of tainted analysis – Tim has been institutionalized for 11 years and Kaylie's obsession strongly declares she has her own psychosis to handle (or mishandle).

And yet, as psychologically interesting as Oculus may be in how it approaches its subject matter, it largely forgets to supplement its mental explorations with anything viscerally interesting.  Flanagan throws in a few jump scares here and there, but tension, at least in the "what could be lurking behind that door?" sense, is largely absent and even the jump scares are of the "somehow you didn't notice the person standing directly behind you" variety.  Oddly enough, a lot of this is a bi-product of what makes the film work intellectually with jumping back and forth between the past and present.  While these temporal revisits are necessary to more objectively judge what became of the Russells, it also robs the viewers of the opportunity to spend time in the present where Kaylie and Tim are trying to survive the night with a supposedly haunted mirror in a house that has an annoying habit of blowing light bulbs.  Thankfully, what little time we have in the present is spent with Karen Gillen, who is able to sell emotionally unhinged intensity much better than her co-star, who acts about as well as you'd expect from a guy named Brenton Thwaites.  Still, after a while the jumping back and forth becomes a tired device that seems to perpetuate because the filmmakers ran out of ideas as to how to keep your interest.  To the filmmakers' credit, they never tip their hand even at the end, leaving you to question still the validity of Kaylie's claims. However, whether or not you still care by that point is a different story.