"Oculus" is a chilling horror-film both critics and audiences cannot stop talking about.
According to Rotten Tomatoes, the movie follows a pair of teenage siblings Tim and Kaylie whose lives drastically changed when Tim was convicted of the murdering their parents. Tim was released from prison, but Kaylie is still haunted by the events.
Kaylie believes her parents were murdered by an unknown entity trapped in an antique mirror found in their childhood home. Determined to prove Tim's innocence, the siblings head to the house where their nightmares came reality.
Check out reviews and official trailer for Oculus below.
The Washington Post gives "Oculus" 3 out of 4 stars:
"That's the most satisfying aspect of "Oculus" - the way in which Flanagan plays on the power of imagination. Shunning traditional flashback techniques, he tells the story in a twisty, perception-distorting way that messes with the audience's heads as much as it does with Tim's and Kaylie's. In that sense, using a mirror as the central metaphor for our darkest fears is a fairly brilliant strategy. When Kaylie and Tim look into the glass, of course, they see nothing but their own reflections."
The Chicago Tribune also gives "Oculus" 3 out of 4 stars:
"Most horror films are relatively sparing in their use of back story flashback; the novelty here, which works well until the last 10 minutes or so, is Flanagan's tight interweave between past- and present-day action, tight enough to inch into pure, dreamy hallucination. Having retrieved the mirror and returned it to the scene of the crime, Gillan's Kaylie sets up a three-camera videography experiment in their late father's home office in order to record whatever evil spirits, or reflections, the mirror can throw at her and Tim. Mission: "to kill it," Kaylie says."
Rotten Tomatoes audiences certify the film fresh with a 72 percent rating:
"Oculus is a character driven story shrewdly written and beautifully acted. It's nice to bask in the sophistication of an intelligently written screenplay that doesn't depend on jump scares. In fact it's not really about shocks at all. Rest assumed there are some frightful scenes, but the drama is more eerie mystery than horror," one user wrote.
