Oculus (Mike Flanagan, 2014) – It can be a hard thing for a critic to admit, but sometimes we can be wrong. I’m having a hard time remembering a movie I was as wrong about as I was with Oculus, though. When I first watched it several months ago at the Toronto International Film Festival (while […]
Oculus is a smart, well acted, and deeply scary film that never treats the audience for a horror film like brain dead zombies who just want a gory, lazy geek show with a bunch of loud noises, whip pans, and smash cuts.
We catch up with Oculus director Mike Flanagan to talk about adapting his own short to feature length, why it’s hard to pitch a movie about a killer mirror, how his lead actors went to great lengths to research their roles for a simple genre film, and how he kind of nerded out working with cast members from Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica.
Oculus Midnight Madness Director: Mike Flanagan Told with a great deal of ambition and style, the “possessed random object” subgenre of horror movies (and the even narrower subgenre of such films using mirrors) gets a much needed shot in the arm with Flanagan’s tightly plotted and original story. Oculus begins by showing 21 year old […]
While solidly entertaining and once again establishing Vin Diesel's sci-fi persona as a credible antihero, Riddick feels like a slight entry in a franchise bound for more ambitious turns.
