Oculus involves the horror staple of a haunted even a demonic thing. In this case a mirror. It could be a hotel (The Shining) or a room (1408).

Kaylie and Tim Russell are brother and sister with a traumatic past. Tim has just been released from a mental institution for killing his father. The father went crazy, tortured and killed his mother. Kaylie believes that the antique mirror in their home somehow possessed their parents to make them do evil things. She has looked into the history of the mirror and found out that previous owners all met strange endings.

Kaylie has tracked down the mirror and brought it to the family home and rigged the house with all sorts of cameras, lights and other scientific instruments. She plans with her brother to destroy the malevolent mirror but Tim who has had years of therapy now remembers the past differently and is sceptical of Kaylie's story of the haunted mirror.

However we see in flashbacks what happened to the Russells and the mirror is playing its tricks both in the past and present.

The film is not original but mixes its ingredient well. Good acting from both the older and younger Russell siblings, lots of eeriness and some chills here and there.

Why Kaylie after all these years starts messing around with the possessed mirror is a question in itself. Surely she cannot expect to win?

OCULUS is a Hollywood blockbuster about a haunted mirror that drives the owner to homicidal urges - a topic previously explored in the likes of the Ealing classic DEAD OF NIGHT and the Amicus chiller FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE. Unfortunately, this version is saddled with a clever-clever script that focuses far too much on telling the story through a mix of present-day scenes and flashback footage, constantly cutting between the two to make a thoroughly confusing - not to mention convoluted - tale.

The problem with OCULUS is that if you take away all the flashback stuff and clever editing then you're left with a straightforward and rather uneventful type of horror film. This is a movie that relies too much on familiar jump scenes and shocks instead of trying to genuinely frighten the viewer. I found it to be overrated and stylistically lacking. It also doesn't help that the two protagonists have the dullest, most self-centred characters, particularly the annoying brother. As for former DR WHO assistant Karen Gillan, she's certainly pretty but her 'acting' consists of reciting dialogue in an American accent with all of the inflection and feeling of an assembly-line automaton. She's very poor, topping off a disappointing film overall.

Tim Russell (Brenton Thwaites) gets released from a mental hospital. Eleven years earlier, his parents (Katee Sackhoff, Rory Cochrane) get a mysterious mirror. His father supposedly tortured and killed his mother. In the present, his sister Kaylie Russell (Karen Gillan) rediscovers the mirror. Tim has only fragmentary memories of the incident. Kaylie aims to prove the murderous supernatural nature of the mirror. Michael Dumont (James Lafferty) is Kaylie's boss at the auction house and her boyfriend.

This movie has great moodiness. Much of it is due to the cold look and the vibrating sound design. Gillan is great. There is real tension about memories and reality when Tim disagrees with Kaylie. It's an old fashion horror like a ghost story told by the camp fire. It is expertly revealed. Everybody including the kids are great. The last act does get a little muddled as it tries to ramp up the excitement while trying to wind down the plot. It would have been great to have Gillan continue as the lead as the franchise inevitably continues.