Movie Review: Oculus (2014)

With Oculus releasing on DVD and BluRay this coming Tuesday, I figured it wouldn't hurt to share some of my opinions on it to help you make a decision on whether or not you'd like to watch it. I got to see it in theaters and have been saving this one for a little while. Mainly because I didn't have a blog at the time.

I'll start you off with a couple of pieces of trivia. Oculus was filmed in my home state of Alabama, which isn't too typical of mainstream releases. It is the most successful film both critically and financially that WWE Studios has attached itself to. The film itself is based on a short film by the writer/director called, Oculus: Chapter 3 - The Man With The Plan. Also you can actually purchase the Lasser Glass online at Pier 1 I believe? I can't quite remember.

Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the most doomed of them all?

The plot of Oculus centers around two characters, Tim Russell, who was institutionalized after a traumatic family incident and his older sister, Kaylie Russell, who avoided the crazy house and believes a haunted mirror is the cause of the incident from their childhood. Tim has been recently released by the recommendation of his doctor and Kaylie has found the mirror and wants Tim to help her destroy it. Kaylie is easily one of the most dislikable characters in a movie ever. Instead of valuing the happy life, career and, family she has now, the very first chance she gets, Kaylie risks it all and Tim's recent sanity to fight a haunted mirror. Now if you had no knowledge of this movie other than that description, what would you think? She literally picks up her brother at the institution and the first thing she wants to talk about is the mirror. She guilt trips him with a promise he made after weeks of mental torture as a child while being carried away by the police. Tim on the other hand has moved on and has a rational outlook about what happened to them as children and wants to leave it all behind. I just realized though that I'm forgetting to mention the most interesting character in Oculus, The Lasser Glass. This thing has a history and rap sheet that would make the killer from Seven jealous. You get a full dose of it's known history, yet you still want to know more about the story of this glass and it's true origins.

This for real scared me while I was looking for images. Enjoy!

So the meat of Oculus is our heroes getting hold of the Lasser Glass through Kaylie's job as an antique broker and taking it to their childhood home to expose the mirror's nature, confront it, and then destroy it. Through an elaborate plan, along with timers, rigged traps for the mirror and backup plans, Kaylie is sure of success. But when she informs us about the mirror, it's history, it's victims and what she believes it's powers to be, which is the ability to control the perception of those around it, we as an audience know that Kaylie and Tim are truly fucked.

His face sums up what you'll be thinking when she goes over her plan.

A bit of an undertone I drew from Oculus, is that it's a metaphor for mental health and care. Tim receives therapy and treatment to get past his traumatic childhood and strives get past it to become a happy and healthy person. He understands it was all rational and an unfortunate situation. Kaylie though slips through the cracks. She is never treated, rarely talks about it and holds on to resentment and vengeance towards the object she believes caused it all, The Lasser Glass. This unchecked mental state eventually leads to her self destruction. It made a lot of sense when I though back through how things play out in the movie. The idea that Kaylie is haunted by ghosts from the past is very literal.


Oculus is a fairly scary film with some real reality bending moments. Many of the scares happen because something is just casually there or happening as opposed to just jumping from around corners or out of the darkness. Though Oculus does have it's fair share of that, but it's used sparingly and doesn't feel super cheap. The special effects are also pretty good with a mix of CGI and practical that the crew used properly and in the right places. The Lasser Glass' ability to alter perception and almost reality is used effectively too, just not as well as it could have been. It makes events a little hard to follow in parts, since at one point you're watching events play out in two different times.

They should have called a guy who knows how to break glass.

All said, Oculus is a better than average horror movie that could have been better with the tools the creators had, but is perfectly fine. It's also subdued enough in gore and content the closer to teenage members of the family to watch, but I wouldn't go much younger than 12 or 11. Expect a sequel in the future for sure with how big a hit this was in the box office, you'd have to be as crazy as Kaylie to not follow up on it. I certainly hope for something of at least just as good quality. So at the very least, hit up your Red Box and check Oculus out of it, it's a really entertaining 90 minutes and scares on a more surreal than gory level. Hopefully you like at as much as I did. Until next time, don't be afraid to be a little scary.