OCULUS

Intrepid Pictures

Directed by: Mike Flanagan

Starring by: Karen Gillan, Brenton Thwaites, Katee Sackhoff, Rory, Cochrane

Oculus…the title is very catchy…and when I look on dictionary, I find the meaning that Oculus came from Latin word, the eye. One of the wisdom words I remembered is beware of your eyes, it glance with shine when your heart is clean but it glance with darkness when your heart is dirty… and I think the title was quite fit with the story about mirror…

It start with the tragedy that happened on Russell family about eleven years ago, when Allan Russell, the father, shoot Marie Russell, the mother, in madness and some strange phantom lady show herself in office room of the father. The tragedy put young Tim, the little son, to mental hospital and separation with his sister, Kaylie. But after eleven years, Kaylie still chase for the mirror. When she finally found it, she also picks Tim that by coincidence got his release from states, and asked the brother to settle things back by destroying the mirror.

I like the tense when Kaylie got the chance to see the mirror again after years, face to face with the mirror that’s try to defend itself by scaring her with weird condition. I don’t know what will happen or what she’ll get if the man who owns the gallery doesn’t come. Obviously not third sculpture because there are only two of them in reality.

The film pace is slow but I understand the reason, the writer tries to build strong story by explain all thing in details. And I think it works well. The tense increase every minute, not by shocking performance of the ghost or loud noise but by the story and all possible situations that would terrifies you when you try to reveal some mysterious thing that could endanger your life. I’m in love with the character of Kaylie, she’s a woman who put everything in detail, from investigation about the mirror and set up her plans to destroy the mirror.

Shamelessly, I though she talks too much about her plan, over confidence that ceiling jack ram will do her purpose without distraction, and it makes the mirror, as individual if it is, think so hard to counter the plan. I mean, in logical, what will you do if someone set up some plans to kill you and he make words of it?

Moreover her motivation was weak, if she want to destroy the mirror why she try to prove her theory by letting the mirror drawing energy from living thing, gain the negative influence and take risk of her own death. In logical, just set up the timer and let the jack ram smashed the mirror in the first place. She doesn’t have to prove anything because all proves has been seen when she was a child. Or, if she finds it necessary to prove her theory, I think the dead plant is enough to show Tim that he’s wrong and after that just let loose the jack ram without setting up the timer.

Despite that, I liked the story, it was original idea, came up with back and forth plot that describe present and past, in the middle of it the story mixing present and past in the same plot. Excellent! It’s not only creepy but also confusing the audience for the end of the story. This story not also scary but fill with psychic drama, something that wouldn’t always like by major audience, for example in Indonesia, but it would get positive credits. And I think it’s paid when Oculus grossed $4,940,000 on its opening day, nearly equaling its production budget of $5 million.

Also, from the movie I’ve got fresh understanding why Kaylie and Tim didn’t get hallucination when they were young, it’s because the child has a pure heart. They were 11 and 10, by that age you would not think about evilness in you but when we’re grown up all hatred, anger, madness, and evil thing grows and like I said on the first line here, beware of your oculus when you looked back at the mirror, probably you look at the devil itself…