oculus movie review

Add Mike Flanagan’s “Oculus” to the horror subgenre of supernatural item movies. This time it’s not a haunted doll or magical box but a deadly mirror with the power to compel people to commit violent acts. A man will think that he is trying to rip a Band-Aid from his finger only to realize that he’s pulling his fingernail off instead. And that’s nothing compared to what happens to teeth. The mirror has destroyed dozens of lives over the years, such as the time a mother thought she was tucking her children into bed but was drowning them in a cistern. “You see what it wants you to see”, as the tagline goes. While the narrative freedom inherent in that premise allows for some truly strong visuals at times—the focus on star Karen Gillan ‘s bouncing red pony tail down a hall or a bloody hand hidden behind a doorframe—”Oculus” eventually becomes little more than a series of ghostly figures and twisted visions on its way to a cop-out of an ending that you’ll see coming an hour away. Solid performances and a few memorable images save it from disaster but Flanagan’s film left me longing for the movie it could have been instead of what it actually is.

When “Oculus” opens, Tim Russell ( Brenton Thwaites ) is being released from years of intensive therapy. Much like Daniel Lutz (whose life story became “ The Amityville Horror “), Tim believed for most of his time in a padded cell that his father was forced to commit horrendous violence because of a supernatural force. His doctors, including Miguel Sandoval in a prologue cameo, reworked those memories to lead him to believe that dad was just a really bad guy and there was no supernatural mojo at work. And so Tim hesitantly leaves the hospital to reenter society. Maybe having lunch with his sister wasn’t the best idea.

Not having the “benefit” of therapy, Tim’s sis Kaylie (Karen Gillan of “Doctor Who”) wastes almost no time pulling her brother back into the world that he has spent years trying to repress. Kaylie, who works at an auction house, has found the mirror. She steals the haunted antique, setting it up in the family home as the focus of a fantastic array of cameras, alarm clocks, temperature gauges, and even a giant swinging blade designed to finally destroy it. Before Kaylie is willing to put an end to the mirror’s unholy reign, she wants to document and prove its power. Another bad idea.

For the entirety of “Oculus,” the narrative cuts back and forth from the adult pair’s efforts to ghostbust the mirror with what happened to them years earlier. Young Tim (Garret Ryan) and young Kaylie ( Annalise Basso ) moved into a lovely home with their father Alan ( Rory Cochrane ), a software designer, and their supportive mother Marie ( Katee Sackhoff ). And then Dad went antique shopping. With far too little set-up, pop goes off the mental rails and mom is left an inevitable victim. The flashbacks in “Oculus” have a depressing fatalism because we’re told who will live and who will die early on, turning these scenes into an exercise in inevitable gore. The lack of suspense is more disheartening when one realizes that the hole hasn’t been filled by any sort of social context at all. Films like “ The Shining ” and “The Amityville Horror” also trafficked in the inevitable but grounded their narratives in cautionary tales of how familial stress and other external factors like alcoholism can destroy a patriarch.

The “present day” material in “Oculus” is much more effective, thanks largely to a game performance from Gillan. She renders Kaylie as a driven woman on the edge of sanity herself. When she growls at the mirror, “You must be hungry,” one can see the B-movie glory that “Oculus” could have been. Her younger brother got the treatment he needed but Kaylie was left to fight for the day she could get vengeance on the mirror that wrecked her life. Gillan sells that hair-trigger intensity in the film’s best moments, and when Flanagan and co-writer Jeff Howard open the door to the however-brief possibility that Kaylie may actually be crazy, “Oculus” is at its most interesting.

Sadly, they can’t maintain that intrigue past the second act. As so many of these ventures do, the final act of “Oculus” becomes an increasingly random series of scenes designed to push buttons instead of anything inherent to character or narrative. If there are no rules or relatable subtext within the world of a horror film, the images have no power. Both overly foreshadowed climactic acts of “Oculus”—they tell us over and over again that dad is going to go homicidal and that they’re going to try to destroy the mirror—feel like genre faits accomplis and so their inevitability becomes little more than a shallow reflection of superior works.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

• Annalise Basso as Young Karen
• Miguel Sandoval as Dr. Shawn Graham
• Katee Sackhoff as Marie Russell
• Brenton Thwaites as Tim Russell
• Rory Cochrane as Alan Russell
• Garretty Ryan as Young Tim
• Karen Gillan as Kaylie Russell
• Jeff Howard
• Mike Flanagan

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Oculus Reviews

A master class in affecting dread.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Oct 22, 2024

While it may have taken unconventional approaches to the visual language of haunted house movies, the narrative is messy and never offers up anything more than surface-level intrigue.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 20, 2023

We’re left with the terrifying fear that if Tim and Kaylie can lose themselves in the mirror’s reflection, so can we.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Feb 18, 2023

Flanagan's treatment elevates the material, both in his use of mind games and emotional complexity.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 12, 2022

It may sound a bit ridiculous, but Flanagan and co-writer Jeff Howard do a fantastic job of making people question whether the threat to our characters is real or imagined right up until the very end of the film.

Full Review | Apr 14, 2021

The horror elements work because this is a character driven story and while there are blood and guts aplenty it is the intensity of the story and the performances that will stay with you.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 1, 2021

Mike Flanagan's debut to mainstream audiences is a tour de force of horror, seamlessly weaving between two timelines as he prepares us for a devastating gut-punch of an ending.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Dec 29, 2020

While there are some solid scares and creepy scenes, considering the pieces, they never amount to much.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Jul 8, 2020

Oculus is an ambitious horror film that doesn't quite reach its potential. While it has a strong cast ... the story just feels like it's spinning its wheels, trying to find the traction it needs to propel forward.

Full Review | Jul 6, 2020

Oculus is a smartly-plotted evil mirror film which slowly reveals itself as a haunting portrayal of child abuse. It's a nice light movie!

Full Review | Jun 30, 2020

The biggest misfortune in Oculus is that it's almost a good movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.7/5 | Nov 22, 2019

The final product is a beautifully shot and wonderful acted entry in the never-ending pool of niche horror movies looking to shock, scare, and unnerve.

Full Review | Original Score: 6.5/10 | Aug 8, 2019

Horror fans shouldn't miss Oculus; films as creepy as this one don't come along too often.

Full Review | Original Score: 7.6/10 | Jun 21, 2019

Mike Flanagan's Oculus does more to a familiar premise than most standard-issue scary movies out there.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 14, 2019

Ultimately, though, it is the characters that count, and Flanagan gives emotional resonance to the story of charming family undone by unexplained forces; and his actors go a long way in portraying this with honesty.

Full Review | Mar 5, 2019

A clever storyline keeps the pace, although it could be argued the film had too many storylines going for its running time.

Full Review | Feb 1, 2019

Oculus was actually awesome, even though I didn't have any expectations for it at all...happy to tell you that this one was well thought-out with some great performances.

Full Review | Jan 5, 2019

In some off-the-wall realm, Oculus works its seedy magic because the concept of frightening furniture and childhood disillusionment is not exactly what one would expect as a passable taunting tie-in of sorts.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 11, 2018

The acting and characters are solid enough, the general idea of the story is captivating and the atmosphere of the piece is genuinely disconcerting.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Nov 1, 2018

The acting is solid, the camera work is noteworthy, and the story is well written.

Full Review | Oct 26, 2018

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Review: Why ‘Oculus’ Is One of the Scariest American Horror Movies In Years

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“Oculus” is an exception. Appropriately being co-released by microbudget fear factory Blumhouse Production — its founder, Jason Blum , helped turn the scrappy productions “Paranormal Activity” and “The Purge” into profitable franchises — much of the new movie’s chilly atmosphere involves the experiences of two characters in a room with one very ominous mirror. As the haunted object plays tricks on its two would-be victims’ minds, the audience falls prey to the ruse as well. Director Mike Flanagan turns the fragile nature of consciousness into a better fear tactic than any visceral shocks could possibly achieve.

“Oculus” certainly relies on a familiar toolbox, including the occasional clichéd moment when something scary materializes right behind an unsuspecting character. But the specifics of the scenario engender a fundamental state of dread that grows heavier with each murky twist. Flanagan’s script, co-written by Jeff Howard and based on an earlier short film, nimbly moves between events that transpired 11 years ago and their ramifications in the present: In the opening scenes, 21-year-old Tim (Brenton Thwaites) is released from a psychotherapy ward after years on lockdown and reunited with his sister, Kaylie ( Karen Gillan ). With a steely resolve, she announces that the pair must return to the childhood home and “kill it” — a declaration that immediately establishes a menacing supernatural presence that remains hard to define throughout the movie.

But Flanagan quickly fills in a few more pertinent details: The siblings’ youth was disrupted with the arrival of the mirror into the claustrophobic study where their father (Rory Cochrane) worked alone; at some point, maybe because of his own lapsing sanity or maybe because the mirror drove him mad, their ill-fated father murdered their mother (Katee Sackhoff), at which point young Tim shot him dead. Kaylie has been waiting for her brother to reemerge into society so the two of them can confront the bizarre ancient menace, which is apparently responsible for 48 deaths in 400 years. As soon as he’s free, she snatches up the mirror at a local auction and brings him back to the scene of the crime, with camcorders set up to capture their every move over the course of one isolated, dreary night. In short order, plenty of things go bump in the night, but it’s gradually clear that nothing happening can be taken for granted, including Kaylie and Tim’s own behaviors. At its best, “Oculus” is a tightly enacted chamber drama that just happens to include supernatural phenomena. The mirror is messing with them at every turn — and, by extension, it’s messing with us.

The first sign that “Oculus” has more on its mind arrives as the adult Tim attempts to shrug off his sister’s recollections of supernatural occurrences with the “fuzzy trace” theory of human psychology — essentially, false memories derived from inaccurate associations: In Tim’s view, their dad was an unfaithful lunatic — hence the cryptic presence of another woman in his study after hours — and eventually went ballistic on his wife as a result of their marital tensions. His kids’ convictions about the nature of these events, the thinking goes, suggest a history of mental illness in the family.

And who’s to say whether Tim has it right? As the duo creep around the house, evading passing shadows and lashing out blindly in the wrong directions, it’s never entirely clear if any given point of view holds ground. “Oculus” keeps digging further into their frightened state, thickening the dreary atmosphere at every turn, so that even while the outcome of the scenario is fairly predictable early on, it’s continually haunting as it maps out a path to get there. A truly contemporary horror movie, its eeriness stems from manipulated cell phone conversations and recorded data on the ubiquitous cameras that may or may not accurately represent events as they transpire. No matter how much technology they have on their side, nothing in certain.

In recent years, few American genre films have managed the extreme spookiness found in many of their overseas brethren. Even while “Oculus” plays by the book in individual moments, it manages to invent a shrewder context for the events in question. It’s not the scenes that matter so much as the way they do (and don’t) fit together. It uses subjectivity like a weapon. By contrast, last year’s generally well-liked haunted house effort “The Conjuring” capably grappled with issues of faith, but failed to unite its bigger ideas with the rudimentary process for freaking us out.

In “Oculus,” the horror is at once deceptively simple and rooted in a deep, primal uneasiness. Its scariest aspects are universally familiar: By witnessing the two leads fall prey to the ghastly object’s manipulation, we too become its victims. Reflecting the way our greatest fears lie within our own insecurities, the mirror is an ideal metaphor for the horror genre’s lasting potency.

Criticwire Grade : A-

HOW WILL IT PLAY? Relativity opens “Oculus” nationwide this weekend. With little competition, it should find respectable returns among the sizable audience for horror films, although its primary audience lies on VOD, where it should be successful for a long time.

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Common Sense Media Review

Outstanding horror flick has gore, children in peril.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Oculus is an outstanding horror film about a haunted mirror. Expect several gory scenes that are designed to induce squirms (including photos of grisly deaths and crime scenes, fingernails being ripped off, etc.); there are also some flat-out scary images that aren't meant for the…

Why Age 18+?

Several very bloody, gory scenes. A man rips off his fingernails. A woman accide

"S--t" is heard a few times, and "f--k" is used a couple of times. "Damn," "hell

An upset mother drinks glass after glass of wine while her kids eat dinner.

Both a married couple and an engaged couple are shown kissing. A mom wears a she

Apple computers are shown during a scene featuring surveillance equipment.

Any Positive Content?

Though the characters quickly get themselves in too deep (and resort to stealing

While the brother and sister characters are well-written and interact in realist

Parents need to know that Oculus is an outstanding horror film about a haunted mirror. Expect several gory scenes that are designed to induce squirms (including photos of grisly deaths and crime scenes, fingernails being ripped off, etc.); there are also some flat-out scary images that aren't meant for the faint of heart. But while there's plenty of blood in the movie, its real focus is on story and characters (the siblings are interesting, albeit not always admirable). Language is somewhat strong, with a few uses of "s--t" and one possible use of "f--k" (spoken quietly during a noisy scene). There's a scene of heavy drinking, some minor kissing between couples, and some Apple computers shown. The movie is likely to be a must-see for horror buffs, and many teens will want to see it, too.

To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Violence & Scariness

Several very bloody, gory scenes. A man rips off his fingernails. A woman accidentally bites into a light bulb (she thinks it's an apple). A woman's scar turns into a bloody, gaping wound. In one scene, a woman shows photographs of grisly deaths and crime scenes. A gun is used. But the main issue here is in the flashbacks, showing two younger children in peril. They're neglected, ignored, tricked, trapped, and eventually attacked -- though viewers do know that they both lived to grow up.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

"S--t" is heard a few times, and "f--k" is used a couple of times. "Damn," "hell," "Jesus," and "oh my God" are also heard a few times.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Both a married couple and an engaged couple are shown kissing. A mom wears a sheer nightie around the house.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

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Positive messages.

Though the characters quickly get themselves in too deep (and resort to stealing, lying, and violence), Oculus has a very strong, interesting sibling relationship. Yes, they argue, but they also clearly care for each other and try to help and protect each other. But in the flashback sequences, the younger children are in peril, and their situation looks pretty hopeless.

Positive Role Models

While the brother and sister characters are well-written and interact in realistic ways -- working together, fighting, and trying to help each other -- overall, their behavior in the film isn't very admirable. Their plan requires stealing, lying, and resorting to violence and destruction.

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents Say (7)
• Kids Say (23)

Based on 7 parent reviews

Outstanding direction with decent scary scenes

What's the story.

After 11 years, Tim Russell (Brenton Thwaites) -- who killed his father as a boy -- is released from a psychiatric hospital. His sister, Kaylie ( Karen Gillan ), immediately asks him to participate in a ritual: to help destroy the creepy old mirror that she thinks caused all the trouble. At first, it appears as if Kaylie may be crazy, but it soon becomes apparent that the mirror does have the power to make people see things. Before long, the siblings are flashing back to the events of their childhood, when the mirror drove their mother ( Katee Sackhoff ) into hysterics and turned their father (Rory Cochrane) into a homicidal maniac. Will Tim and Kaylie be able to tell reality from nightmare -- and survive?

Is It Any Good?

Creepy mirrors have been featured in horror movies plenty of times before, but none of them have been anything quite like OCULUS. It immediately turns your expectations upside via the character of Tim, a troubled but cured soul with blood on his hands. The question of whether he'll kill again quickly becomes moot as his old bond with his sister re-asserts itself. The characters are strong and interact in vivid ways, and they remain the movie's anchor; they're no horror movie amateurs, and they struggle to stay on top of the scares.

But Oculus ' real weapon is its flashbacks, which aren't specifically used as flashbacks but rather as illusions and nightmares forced upon the characters by the mirror's evil. They fold over into reality as younger and older versions of the same characters regard one another, and it's clear that they shouldn't be taken literally. This is a breakthrough for director Mike Flanagan, and (apologies for the pun) a most reflective horror movie.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Oculus ' violence and gore. Which scenes were meant to make you squeal and squirm, and which had a more visceral effect? What's the difference between these moments? Do bloody scenes make a movie more frightening?

How scary is Oculus compared to other horror movies you've seen? What's scary about it? How did you feel about the scenes with the young children in peril? Did it make a difference knowing that they were only flashbacks or nightmares and that the children survive to grow up?

What's the relationship between the central brother and sister like? Is it realistic? Is it stereotypical ? If you have siblings, how does it compare to your relationship with them?

Movie Details

• In theaters : April 11, 2014
• On DVD or streaming : August 5, 2014
• Cast : Karen Gillan , Katee Sackhoff , Brenton Thwaites
• Director : Mike Flanagan
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Relativity Media
• Genre : Horror
• Run time : 105 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : terror, violence, some disturbing images and brief language
• Last updated : March 2, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Oculus Review

13 Jun 2014

104 minutes

Writer-director Mike Flanagan’s troll abduction story Absentia was an outstanding direct-to-DVD horror film, as much for its odd attitude and unusual character drama as its scares. With Oculus — an expansion of his 2006 short Oculus: Chapter 3 — The Man With A Plan — he successfully transfers his offbeat sensibilities to the big screen. It’s in the low-key, dread-infused mode of recent horror hits like Mama, Sinister and Insidious, and revives the occasional sub-genre of ‘haunted mirror’ horror (dating back to the 1945 Dead Of Night) without going down the expected there’s-a-zombie-behind-you road.

It’s structurally unusual in a way that gets into the story swiftly, confining 95 per cent of the film to a single location but at different times. The sibling leads’ childhood encounter with the monstrous mirror is intercut with their daring, meticulously planned, obsessively determined second go-round with the vampire looking glass. Kaylie (Karen Gillan) is controlling, neurotic and fanatically vengeful, while her brother (Brenton Thwaites) has had years of therapy to convince him what happened was all in his head and is reluctant to get back into the insanity. It’s an uncommon relationship in horror, and Flanagan makes the characters intriguingly cracked in different ways. Kaylie makes elaborate precautions, which include an anchor on a timer aimed at the mirror and a doomed dog. She rattles off an amusing history of the haunting, which has killed at least 45 people, while Tim reluctantly remembers how bad things were as he resists getting caught up again.

It’s impressively acted by Gillan (with American accent) and Thwaites, backed up by Annalise Basso and Garrett Ryan as young Kaylie and Tim and good, simmering work from Rory Cochrane and Katee Sackhoff as the possessed parents. It has its share of shocks, but works more on a level of stretched nerves and general creepiness — and is less inclined to let its characters off easily than most recent horrors.

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'Oculus' Review: A Mind-Bending New Horror Franchise Is Born

These days it feels like every horror movie can be easily categorized. Either it's a possession movie, a found footage movie, a slasher movie or some inane combination. Finding something different is rare.  Mike Flanagan 's Oculus , at the very least, strives to be different. Combining elements from several subgenre columns into something that feels new and fresh, Oculus is the story of a brother and sister who try to destroy a haunted mirror that drives people to wild hallucinations, blurring lines between what's real and what's not.

Flanagan's script is a psychological jumping bean as it hops wildly between multiple timelines, putting the audiences in the shoes of the characters, everyone totally unaware of precisely what's going on. The whole thing has a fluid feeling that's not exactly innovative, but exciting enough to potentially kick off a new franchise. Read more of our Oculus movie review below.

Karen Gillan ( Doctor Who, Guardians of the Galaxy ) is Kaylie, a young woman reunited with her brother Tim ( Malificent's Brenton Thwaites ) as he's let out of mental institution. Right away she tells him she's found it. The haunted mirror that, just maybe, ruined their lives with its wicked ways. Thanks to a ripe and fascinating backstory spanning generations (surely included for possible sequels and prequels), we're initially lead to believe Kaylie. However, as the film continues on, the validity of her claims that this mirror is haunted are called into question. Then, just as we think we've uncovered the truth, a series of flashbacks we've been watching (featuring Kaylie and Time as young kids along with their parents, played by Empire Records ' Rory Cochrane and Battlestar Galactica' s Katee Sackhoff ) start to become more and more prevalent.

Are we in the past? Are we in the present? Is this really happening? Is it not? We can never quite tell. That's in large part due to Flanagan's use of cameras. Whether it be the diagetic cameras Kaylie uses to document the events, or non-diagetic cameras perched high above the action giving the audience a powerful, off-putting feeling, reality and perspective are always in question. Nothing ever is clear, and that makes things all the more frightening.

As Kaylie, Gillan is a formidable, captivating lead. Thwaites, on the other hand isn't quite as natural a performer. Together, they do a solid job even if they're eclipsed by their younger counterparts, played by  Annalise Basso and Ryan Garrett . Those two young actors give the flashbacks real energy and make what feels like a secondary story into much more.

One downside to Oculus is, while it's fun to watch, and and a puzzle worth unraveling, it's never quite that scary. There's plenty of tension, a few jump scares, some gleeful turn-your-head goriness, but never anything that'll keep you awake at night. The film's power comes not from its scares, but from its mystery.

Oculus leaves about 500 million options open for sequels, prequels or spinoffs and I hope we see just that. This is a really interesting, worthy conceit done incredibly well. Fright fans will be pleased.

/Film rating: 7 of 10

Oculus Movie Review

Written by Karin Crighton

Official Site

Directed by Mike Flanagan Written by Mike Flanagan and Jeff Howard, based on a short by Jeff Howard, Mike Flanagan, and Jeff Seidman 2013, 105 minutes, Rated R Theatrical release on April 11th, 2014

Starring: Brenton Thwaites as Tim Russell Karen Gillan as Kaylie Russell Katee Sackhoff as Marie Russell Rory Cochrane as Alan Russell Annalise Basso as young Kaylie Garrett Ryan as young Tim

Tim (Brenton Thwaites) is celebrating his 21st birthday with a festive release from the insane asylum. He’s been incarcerated for eleven years after shooting his father in self-defense. The story he told the police back in 2002 was that ghosts haunting the antique mirror in his father’s study had driven his parents mad and he had to kill his father to save his sister Kaylie. Years of intense therapy have convinced him it wasn’t true and he’s ready to move on with a normal life with his sister by his side. Problem is, Kaylie still believes it was ghosts. And she wants to fight back.

There’s a lot of potential in Oculus but it loses steam as soon as Kaylie (played by Karen Gillan with a near-flawless American accent) and Tim enter their unsellable childhood home. Kaylie has rigged the place with the latest in technology in an attempt to outwit the murderous mirror, and her explanation of the oculus’ legend goes on and on. While necessary, it gets a bit monotonous. Tim starts out with fire in his heart; Kaylie seems to be spiraling into madness just when he has recovered and he is frustrated and frightened for her. But Thwaites is given nothing to do with these emotions; it all feels like a lame duck attempt to sway Kaylie with words when he could easily just pick her up and carry her outside. They hug immediately upon his release at the hospital; physical or emotional distance isn’t a problem with these siblings. Instead, he sees one sign of evidence that the mirror is possessed and that central conflict goes out the window. Tim and Kaylie watch along with us as writer/director Mike Flanagan shows us what “really” happened eleven years ago as their mother goes mad, their father fades into his own mind, and they attempt to get help in vain. It’s kinda cool to watch young Tim and older Kaylie inhabit the same screen on several occasions, but that alone doesn’t help the story save remind us they’re only mirroring the past (get it – mirror ?). It makes sense for the child versions of Kaylie and Tim to be so helpless, but it’s a little annoying to watch adult Kaylie and Tim fail to learn anything from their mistakes and make no real attempt to escape history repeating itself.

I wish Flanagan had dived deeper into this idea. There’s a scene in which Kaylie reminds Tim that the mirror “ate” their lab. Tim tells her she doesn’t remember that the family dog contracted parvo, and had to be put down. The brief moment where we do not know which story is true is the most interesting of Oculus. Tim tells Kaylie that mental illness runs in their family and I hoped we’d find out sooner or later that all of the previous victims were relatives; that this is all a schizophrenic dream of older Tim after he watched his father strangle his sister. It wouldn’t even matter then if they repeated history in that version, the point is that he genuinely tried to move on and failed.

But that doesn’t happen. Tim and Kaylie don’t learn anything. They don’t get the forgiveness of the parents they abandoned or killed, they don’t discover why the mirror is possessed, and they don’t explain what happens to the spirits trapped by the mirror.

The acting is solid in the absence of tight direction; Gillan and Thwaites give solid performances that perhaps lack the warmness we know them capable of. The breakout performances come from their on-screen parents Rory Cochrane and Katee Sackhoff. Cochrane delivers a sharply funny and frighteningly dark performance as Alan. He surrenders to his own paternal failings in a heartbreaking finale that devastates. Sackhoff is achingly vulnerable and open as a wife fearing a crumbling marriage, a mother resenting her children, and a woman coping with the inevitability of age.

The editing is excellent; the jump-cuts are lighting quick and the transitions between 2002 and 2013 are perfect, but that’s the only thing moving Oculus forward.

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• Karin Crighton
• Mike Flanagan
• Jeff Howard

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