Monday, April 14, 2014

Dollar Bin Splurge of the Week:Oculus(2014)

By Eric Polk-
It's awfully scary when a film is backed by the folks at WWE Studios. I don't mean this as a euphemism. It's very scary when a film is backed by WWE Studios. The list of 'movies' released by Vincent Kennedy McMahon and friends is a who's who of crap with the exception of 2006's See No Evil. The recently released Oculus, however, strives where others have failed because this movie is actually watchable.

Directed by Mike Flanagan, Oculus is essentially two movies. One, the story of a fresh-from-the-mental-hospital brother and obsessive sister trying to dispose of a mirror which apparently is possessed by an evil supernatural spirit. The second, told in flashback, is what happened the first time they saw the mirror and all of the bad things that occurred as a result.

While the story is quite formulaic, the longer the movie goes, the better the movie gets. The tension builds and builds, though leading to a too obvious result. It's well-acted with some decent scare scenes, one rather gruesome gore scene involving light bulb tartar, and good atmosphere. I call this a splurge but you should really take in a matinee or wait until it comes out on the various streaming sites.


1 comment:

Unknown said...

Good review!

I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed this movie as well. I was very apprehensive about it being backed by WWE, but took a chance on the R rating thinking maybe it would mean it was different than the cookie cutter PG-13 "haunting" movies that are all the rage right now. Glad I did.

I did a review of it as well.

http://www.terrorphoria.com/2014/04/oculus-movie-review.html