00:00:00 So do you remember when I said that there were films which I was really afraid to see? Well, Oculus is one of them and guess what I’m freaking watching? Also, take note my bravery as I am watching this at, like, 10pm. No, you’ve been drinking!
Anyway, I’ve heard that it is a really good film and not actually too scary. I’m just afraid that I’m going to be dodging mirrors by the end of the night. Oculus was originally a short film created by screenwriter/director Mike Flanagan. This is his full motion picture adaption and it stars my one true love, Karen Gillan. She is pretty much the only one who is going to drag me through this.
Okay, I’ve stalled for long enough? Good. Horror Holiday presents Oculus!
00:00:51 Oh no way! This is a WWE Studio picture? I didn’t know John Cena was producing now! That man is fucking talented!
00:01:55 Young redhead girl and her brunette brother try to escape a house. A young adult sneaks up behind them with a gun, aims and fires. Smash cut to the young adult in therapy, explaining his dream.
00:03:10 Let me stop us right here. Fair warning: this diary log is going to get strange. There are a lot of perception mind fucks, which is one of the other things that attracted me to this film. The perception filter is going to be difficult to conceptually portray in writing, so I’ll try my best to construct it in a way that makes some semblance of sense.
00:03:11 Oh, and a perception filter is basically the veil between our realities. Our reality is as we perceive it. If we perceive something, then it is real. But what is reality, really? Reality is just a thin veil between our perception of dimensions. Mind fucked yet?
Look around the room you are in. Things seem similar, right? Now try to focus on something that you take for granted, something that has always been in your line of sight but, when you survey a room, you’re all like, whatever. Stare at it. You noticed some new things about it, right? Details have emerged that you never noticed before, huh? Now it is a part of your reality, whether you like it or not. But did it exist before you took notice? That’s what perception is. Welcome to Oculus.
00:03:12 Oh, and the young adult, which I can assume is the young redhead’s brother, is a generic, wavy-haired Abercrombie model. He will be known as Fitch (because Abercrombie is too long, dammit!)
00:03:23 There she is! Her red pony tail swings back and forth as she marches towards an auction house bidding room. The love of my life, Karen Gillan!
00:04:09 And she’s buying the goddamn haunted mirror. Why, Karen? Why?!
00:04:15 Stop bidding! Just use the buy now option! You’re paying wayyy over sticker price!
00:04:30 Fitch is being lectured by his doctor to be safe when he leaves the medical facility. It is important for his recovery. Doc, I think safety is important for anyone’s recovery.
00:06:04 Gillan picks her brother up from the One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Memorial Hospital and asks him to move in with her until he’s settled. Fitch doesn’t seem like he’s into that type of commitment just yet. He just wants to pose in front of stores for preteen clothing. God, just let the man live how he wants!
00:06:52 Gillan tells Fitch that she found the mirror that drove him crazy. Fitch, obviously, is not pleased.
00:07:27 Gillan wants to kill the mirror. Now I’m amped! Let’s kill some fucking mirrors guys! Better yet, let’s just kill all the goddamn mirrors! Is this a social commentary of modern narcissism? This is your fault, teenagers! Taking all those damn selfies! Now we have to take it out on the mirrors!
00:08:48 Flashback to eleven years earlier. Katee Sackhoff of Battlestar Galactica Starbuck fame and the children’s Dave Matthews-looking father are moving into a new home in what looks like Alabama. It may be the same house from The Patriot but I could have sworn the British burnt that down. Wait, is this reality?? HAVE WE ALREADY STARTED?!
00:09:32 Jump cut to present day. This editing is going to be the death of this diary log.
00:09:56 Fitch decides to move into a hotel room. It fits his amateur modeling career better, he says.
00:10:29 Karen Gillan says that she is going to kick the mirror’s ass tomorrow if Fitch wants to come watch. I’ll come watch, Karen! From a distance and all, though. I don’t want to get too close and end up in 1930’s New York or something (someone please get that reference.)
00:10:47 And jump cut to eleven years prior. I don’t know how I’m going to keep track of this. I already use freaking colors. Am I supposed to italicize everything now??
00:11:49 Dave Matthews stubs his toe in the kitchen. No, you got jump scared!
00:12:01 Then he sees a freaky girl with glowing eyes for a second but she vanishes when he double takes. Perception filters are a bitch, man. He enters the room with the all-mighty Mirror of Camelot and sees a blood stain on his shirt which obviously isn’t there in real life. He shrugs and goes back to bed.
00:13:38 Karen Gillan awakes in the middle of the night and starts trash talking the mirror. She turns away and Dave Matthews appears and begins strangling her. But she is actually still in bed, she only dreamt she awoke and approached the mirror.
00:13:59 How the fuck am I going to write these perception glitches coherently? Dammit. If I can someone convey the actual story along with my made up side-plots, I deserve a freaking Oscar.
00:16:07 Gillan explains to her boyfriend that she has to kick a mirror’s ass, so she’s taking the weekend off.
00:16:55 Gillan visits the mirror at the auction house, ready to bring it home. While inspecting the mirror, she notices things moving in the reflection behind her. She turns and sees nothing has changed. So is this like a staring into Medusa’s eyes type of thing? Where, if you stare too long, your reality becomes royally fucked?
00:19:09 This mirror is already mind fucking Gillan. She tells Mirror of Camelot, “bring it on.”
00:19:49 By the way, they got rid of Karen Gillan’s Scottish accent. She is sporting an American one here and it makes me sad.
00:20:24 Eleven years ago, in a galaxy far far away…
00:20:39 Dave Matthews sits in his office, which is the mirror’s place of residence. Just saying, this mirror is gothic as shit. It does not fit the room at all. It looks like it should be in the Evil Queen’s lair. How did you escape the cartoons, Mirror, and enter Alabama?? Do you even have a valid passport?
00:21:39 Baby Gillan complains that she doesn’t have a cell phone but all her friends at school do. I can totally relate, Baby Gillan from eleven years ago.
00:22:42 Fitch and Gillan return home. Gillan brings her dog, who is named Dog. Come on, Karen. You have the imagination to do battle with an evil-riddled mirror but you can’t come up with a creative enough name for your dog?
00:24:27 Fitch enters his dad’s old office and is attracted to a metal hook in the wall. He looks away and then it’s gone. He actually isn’t that shocked that it disappears. If this were me, I’d probably burn the house down from that experience alone.
00:25:38 Gillan and Fitch bring the mirror inside. Gillan has a bunch of cameras set up to distinguish between what they are seeing and what is real. Or… real.
00:27:05 She also has an alarm set to go off every hour and each room tracking the temperature so that if there are changes, alarms will trigger.
00:27:30 Gillan begins a documentary-style introduction towards one of her cameras. She states her purpose: that these recordings will prove if there is an, “observable predictable supernatural force,” within the mirror that is responsible for decades worth of deaths.
00:28:05 She then introduces the mirror’s history of killing.
00:29:03 Oh, by the way, smash all your mirrors now. Trust no one!!!
00:30:39 Gillan reveals the rolodex of past victims. Satan’s Mirror has a bit of a rap sheet. Basically, this shit is serious.
00:30:45 As Gillan is going over the accounts, she is distracted by a golden retriever passing through the adjacent hallway. They didn’t bring a golden retriever.
00:31:00 Gillan also brought much food and water. Basically, the mirror doesn’t come out and kill you Freddy Krueger style. It messes with your perceptions so that you die of “natural” causes like starvation, dehydration, self mutilation, etc. That is why Gillan has set up the timers and such.
Let’s break it down again. We are shredding the fibers of reality here. Time doesn’t exist; Lucy lied to you. Time is how we measure things but time is not real. It is our reality but it does not exist. We perceive time as minutes, hours, days, years. But what actuality does it hang itself on? It makes people, places, things easier to perceive, creates balance within our reality. Cause and effect. It takes three hours to drive to Boston. That seems simple. But in actuality, the time and distance traveled is something made up to make sense within our minds.
The mirror messes with that basis. You can be staring at a wall for ten seconds, look away a beat then come back. It’s been ten days. Perception is a fragile thing; it’s a tragic thing to lose.
00:32:23 Fitch interrupts Gillan’s documentary to argue causation versus correlation. And Fitch is right, in ways. What is this, an actual smart horror movie? Well, I’ll be damned.
00:32:45 Fitch asks why they can’t just smash the Evil Queen’s Mirror. Gillan smirks and reminds him that they tried that as kids. Fitch does not remember the event taking place.
00:32:47 It’s a tragic thing to lose indeed.
00:35:11 Gillan explains that the mirror won’t let you destroy it. You can approach it with an ice pick but a second later, you’ll be sitting in another room, wondering why there is an ice pick penetrating through your chest.
00:35:33 WHAT
00:35:34 IS
00:35:35 LIFE????
00:36:20 Just saying, for doing battle with the hunched back mirror of Notre Dame, Gillan has a pretty fool-proof plan. Whether she actually kills the mirror by dawn or not, she has a timing mechanism set up to launch an anvil driven hammer through the mirror. Your move, Mickey Mirror!
00:36:35 I wonder if Disney sues me for all these references?
00:36:43 Dave Matthews types in his office. The mirror watches. He takes a bandaid off his finger and continues typing. He looks back down and the bandaid is back on his finger. He takes a staple remover to remove the bandaid, but his vision of a reality returns and he has taken off his fingernail.
00:40:04 Gillan uses the dog in the name of science. She puts Dog in front of the mirror, covered by a sheet.
00:40:50 Dave Matthews has bought a gun in case of shooting the mirror…. and potentially your entire family if your reality folds.
00:41:34 So the Mirror of Azkaban is obviously destroying Matthews’ psyche. Can we go back and see if Jack Torrance had any weird looking mirrors at his Breckinridge palace? I mean, for fuck sake, that place was big enough!
00:42:47 So has it really been 42 minutes of movie time, OR DO YOU JUST THINK IT HAS BEEN??? What if we haven’t even started the diary log! Mwuahahahaha!
00:44:53 Also, guys, I think we have to discuss the dark realities of these characters as well. Like in The Shining with Jack and then with his son’s visions, can we trust that what we are shown on screen is actually real or canon? Jack had a potential mental illness along with alcoholism. His son had visions and could have suffered from similar mental illnesses.
What if Dave Matthews is simply mentally disturbed and the stress of the new house set it off? What if both of his children suffer from a similar illness as well and what we are seeing is what they want us to see, i.e. what they believe they are seeing. Just some tips to think beyond what the movie is showing you.
00:46:01 So Gillan reveals that the mirror killed their golden retriever. She has placed Dog in front of the mirror to see if it kills again. You may receive a call from PETA soon, Miss Gillan.
00:47:11 Gillan and Fitch discuss their childhood and what they believe actually happened. Five minutes pass. But an hour passes. The timers sound. The temperature slightly rises.
00:50:03 Fitch argues that the family may just have mental problems and basically states all that I did above. Honestly, director Mike Flanagan, it takes some balls to punch a hole through your whole movie premise and still keep it running! Fire all the executives responsible for the Halloween remakes, hire more people like Mike fucking Flanagan!
00:51:27 Gillan finally agrees that Fitch may have a point. She walks into the office to turn off the camera and end the Mirror experiment.
00:51:59 She enters the office and is frozen. The cameras have been moved to face each other. Dead plants lay at their tripoded feet.
00:52:01 Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?
00:52:08 The temperature has now risen ten degrees in the last, I don’t know, five minutes? Hour? FIVE HOURS?
00:52:13 Gillan is as amped as Bill Paxton when he sees a goddamn tornado. Fitch’s mental well-being completely crashes to the ground. Dudeeee, you should totally go back to Cuckoo’s Nest Hospital and be like, “I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO!”
00:52:27 Nooooooo. So, during Gillan and Fitch’s argument, they were standing still on screen. But, as Gillan rewinds the camera feed, she sees that they moved the cameras to face each other and they placed the dead plants while arguing.
00:52:50 Houston, we have a fucking problem.
00:53:39 Gillan and Fitch leave the office to observe more perception fuckery around the house.
00:54:33 Fitch thinks he walked outside and made a phone call. But he just sat down in the middle of the room. Fitch is quickly losing it.
00:55:09 Eleven fortnights ago, Baby Gillan witnessed her mother having a staring contest with Mirror Mirror Almighty
00:57:15 Starbuck sends the children to bed. She is challenging Doctor Mirror to an ol’ fashioned DRAW!
00:57:59 Starbuck finds Dave Matthews’ work. He has scribbled meaningless words all over some of his paperwork. Is he Jack Torrance Reincarnated? Whatever you do, kids, don’t let him believe that he is a good writer. He’ll move you all out to Breckinridge and chase you through mazes for eternity!
00:58:29 Starbuck throws everything off Dave Matthews’ desk. Or did she really?
00:59:00 She throws a paperweight at the mirror in anger. The mirror counterattacks with perception fuckery! The mirror has possessed Starbuck.
00:00:00 So do you remember when I said that there were films that I was really afraid to see? Well, Oculus is one of them and guess what I’m freaking watching? Also, take note my bravery as I am watching this at, like, 10pm. No, you’ve been drinking!
Anyway, I’ve heard that it is a really good film and not actually that scary. I’m just afraid I’m going to be dodging mirrors by the end of the….. Ahhhh! Gotcha! Did I get you? You thought we were back at the beginning and… Yeah, that was lame. I’ll show myself out…
01:00:30 Starbuck tries to grab Young Fitch’s throat. Baby Gillan and Young Fitch scramble away as she pursues.
01:00:50 Dave Matthews returns home to find Starbuck banging on the children’s door. She tries to strangle him as well.
01:02:16 Somehow, Jack-Torrance-influenced-Dave Matthews appears to be the sane one here.
01:02:52 Until he makes an outbound call that gets intercepted by Oculus Wireless and he gets possessed too.
01:03:42 The hour timer sounds. Fitch can’t distinguish the past from the present anymore. Maybe it’s a bit too soon to go bragging to the Memorial Hospital.
01:04:40 Possessed Dave Matthews is doing his best impression of Kathy Bates’ Misery, tells his children to not disturb their mother who now lives in their bedroom for all eternity.
01:05:02 Two minutes have passed. The hour timer sounds again.
01:05:53 Pretty sure Dave Matthews has Starbuck tied up in their room Exorcist style. And, honestly, I don’t blame anyone for that method after what I’ve seen so far.
01:06:16 You have probably noticed that I’m not even clarifying the past and present cut scene jumps. They’re all meshed together because what is time other than layers on top of one another, ready to be fucked with by evil mirrors.
01:06:23 Gillan goes to replace a blown light bulb. After fixing it, she picks up an apple she was previously eating and takes a bite. But the apple is really a light bulb. And it has self destructed within her mouth.
01:07:43 Except it hasn’t. And it is really an apple. Are you all still with me?
01:09:10 Dave Matthews spends his days staring at Mirror Mirror, entranced by it’s majestic glory and unabashed triumph. Perhaps Oculus is really about their father’s affair with the mirror and his children’s hatred towards their step-mirror-mother.
01:10:42 Baby Gillan sneaks into her parents’ bed room, where she finds her mother tied up in a chain collar like a dog.
01:10:45 Come on, Dave Matthews, the mirror isn’t even sexy. It’s all gothic and shit. Do you really want to bang that for the rest of your life? No I will not be your best man!
01:11:23 The children complain that their new step-mirror-mom won’t buy groceries or clean the house. She just married you for the sex and money! Can’t you see you’re tearing this family apart?!
01:14:34 And now the perception filters are overlapping as Young Fitch witnesses adult Fitch enter his bedroom.
01:17:12 The perception filters mess with Gillan, who stabs her boyfriend whom she thought was her possessed mother.
01:17:40 Boyfriend dies.
01:17:54 Gillan’s phone rings and it’s her boyfriend asking how things are going.
01:18:00 Gillan concludes that she couldn’t have killed her boyfriend, that the mirror is playing tricks again
01:18:44 She turns on her iPhone camera and raises the lens to reveal her dead boyfriend. Her actual dead boyfriend.
01:18:46 THIS MIRROR PLAYS FOR KEEPS!
01:18:50 Listen, I can’t properly explain the mind fuckery that’s going on right now. I’m just calling it as I see it.
01:21:08 Gillan and Fitch call for help but they realize that they didn’t. That they can’t. That this situation is really, really bad.
01:21:45 Dave Matthews loads his gun.
01:22:26 Gillan and Fitch stare at themselves staring at the mirror. The mirror projects a dead, dead possessed being. It chases a just-transformed Baby Gillan and Young Fitch into their rooms.
01:23:05 Oh, by the way, smash all your mirrors now. Trust no one!!!
01:25:02 Adult Fitch convinces Adult Gillan that they need to get downstairs to activate the anchor swing. The dead, dead possessed step-mirror-mother is trying to chase them away from their, well, potential NUKE.
01:25:14 Dave Matthews unleashes possessed Starbuck to eat their children and SAVE THEIR MARRIAGE???
01:26:53 Baby Gillan and Young Fitch attempt an escape from the house. Baby Gillan smacks Starbuck with a golf club and dives out a second floor window.
01:28:07 Adult Fitch watches as Dave Matthews approaches with his gun. “You’re just a trick.” Dave Matthews shoots.
01:28:48 Karen Gillan reenters the house and finds her creepy dead ex-boyfriend hanging around the Mirror of Eternal Life, all bloodied up and shit. Now you’re having an affair too?!
01:29:30 Baby Gillan finds Young Fitch hiding in a corner. Starbuck pops out and begins strangling her daughter but she eventually releases Baby Gillan.
01:30:30 Dave Matthews shoots and murders Starbuck.
01:32:06 The children rush the Mirror of Xerxes with golf clubs and hack away wildly. Ironically, they miss every time. Come on, Dave Matthews, I know you hate your family but at least give your kids golf lessons. Even the rich parents who despise their children provide that!
01:32:21 Dave Matthews finds his children near the mirror. He points his gun at Baby Gillan. Young Fitch swings his club at Matthews’ arm and dislodges the weapon (fore!)
01:33:30 Young Fitch obtains the firearm and aims at his father. Dave Matthews seats himself upon the ground, grabs young Fitch’s gun-brandishing hands, and pulls the trigger.
01:34:22 The hour timer goes off and Fitch finds himself seated on the floor, in front of Mirror of Apocalypse, alone.
01:34:39 Baby Gillan finds herself in 1930’s New York City! (Just kidding) … finds herself in her father’s office, eleven years ago, wielding a pitching iron in both hands. Alone.
01:34:51 She turns to the mirror and sees her mother, hands outstretched for her daughter. Baby Gillan enters the mirror’s hug.
01:35:28 Fitch rises and approaches the anvil swing activation. He flips the switch.
01:35:35 And pierces Karen Gillan’s skull
01:36:19 NOOOOO! MY ONE TRUE LOVE! NOOOOOO!
01:37:10 The police arrive on scene and take Gillan’s body away. Fitch is in handcuffs.
01:37:55 Fitch screams it was the mirror as he is taken away in a police cruiser.
01:38:15 Oooohhh, so you know how we talked about bragging to the guys at the Memorial Hospital, Fitch? Yeahhhh, let’s pass on that for a while…..
END CREDITS
That’s a wrap on Oculus! And it only took a few beers and half a bottle of wine to get through!
So I apologize for the story confusion. It’s difficult to portray these timelines as they unfold upon each other. I adored the perception filter idea though. It really is brilliant.
While the movie does have it’s fair share of plot holes, Oculus is definitely worth a watch and is creepy for sure. It is probably once of the coolest horror movies that I have seen.
Anyway, I hope I didn’t shatter anyone’s grasp on reality!
Sources
- Oculus. Dir. Mike Flanagan. Perf. Karen Gillan, Brenton Thwaites. Relativity Media, 2013.
- Cover Image
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