When historians look back on the horror cinema of the 2010s, Mike Flanagan will undoubtedly be considered one of the decade’s most influential filmmakers. Though he lacks a distinct breakout hit, Flanagan has quietly built a reputation as one of the finest directors working in horror today, and if 2017’s Gerald’s Game isn’t considered the best of the recent glut of Stephen King adaptations, it’ll only be because he outdid himself with Doctor Sleep, his upcoming sequel to The Shining.
Flanagan’s first success, the film that made him a director to watch, was 2013’s Oculus, and, for my money, it’s still his best work. Tim Russell (Brenton Thwaites) is released from the psychiatric hospital where he’s lived since the deaths of his parents: the official version of events is that Alan, his abusive father, killed his wife, Marie, and was about to kill his children before Tim shot him in self-defense. Years of therapy have convinced Tim of the official story, but his sister, Kaylie (Karen Gillan), is not so persuaded. She uses her job at an auction house to get her hands on what she believes was the true cause of their parents’ deaths: a cursed mirror called the Lasser Glass with a long history of death in its wake. She invites Tim back to their childhood home to document the mirror’s deleterious effects on the human mind, prove the innocence of both Tim and her father, and then destroy it.
Suffice it to say, despite Kaylie’s extensive precautions (three cameras filming the mirror at all times, temperature monitors in every room to detect paranormal activity, alarms to remind her and Tim to eat and, most famously, an anchor suspended from the ceiling that will smash the mirror if a manual timer isn’t reset every thirty minutes), things don’t go according to plan. The mirror can completely warp human perception, even erase memories. In one of its simplest but most effective gotchas, Kaylie takes a bite from an apple, only to see the mirror has tricked her into eating a lightbulb, which then immediately turns back into an apple. Though broadly well-received, a small but vocal minority criticised the films’ ending, which leaves the viewer completely uncertain which of the film’s events, if any, actually happened. But I have the answer.
None of it actually happened. It’s a movie.
The Sundae 