User Reviews

For my birthday I decided to view a "new" title from auteur film maker Mike Flanagan. With Oculus (2013-also reviewed) having been my intro to his work,I decided to look into the first of Flanagan's mirrors.

View on the film:

Filmed in 4 days from a budget raised on GoFundMe, editor/cinematographer/co-writer/director Mike Flanagan reflects on what was to come with future recurring motifs of stretched lower jaws and an abrasive use of alarm sounds booming in the location. Set in one single room, Flanagan impressively locks the location with a slow-burn Horror atmosphere threaded from side shots of the pristine white room and long lingering shots aimed straight at the mirror. Reviving some of the history of the mirror mentioned here for Oculus (2013) later, the screenplay by Flanagan & Seidman gazes into unsettling psychological horror from the monologues by Russel cracking his state of mind over a desire for the mirror to reveal its secrets. On his own for the whole film, Scott Graham (who'd later work with Flanagan on Oculus and Absentia (2011)) gives a wonderfully jittery turn as Russel, whose calculations and extensive research are torn by the Oculus rift.

Oculus was creepy and unnerving. It is a little over 30 minutes, it takes place entirely in a single, undecorated room, and is almost entirely performed by a single actor. A man locks himself in a room with a large decorative mirror. He has several recording devices set up to document what will happen. He turns the cameras on and begins explaining what led to this "experiment." It turns out that the mirror has a history of causing violent death in every place that it has hung, including the narrator's own home. His father and mother were among the mirror's victims, and now he wants to document its effects. By shutting himself up in the room and recording what happens, he intends to prove the mirror is cursed.

In Oculus, there are very few special effects supplementing the performance. Yet, it builds incredibly well towards a tense, satisfying conclusion. For much of the film, the mirror actually stays covered up by a white sheet, but even without much happening visually, the film still creates and builds a tense atmosphere. I consider this short film to be one of the more effective entries in its genre.

"Oculus: Chapter 3 - The Man with the Plan" is a half-hour short film from almost 10 years ago. The writer and director is Mike Flanagan and he also made a feature film based on this one here. The whole thing is basically about a man's desperate attempts to prove that an old mirror (in a very sterile environment) is haunted. It's basically a one-man show for the lead actor here and I guess he does a fine job all in all. The random rambling gets repetitive and annoying, but that's not his fault, but the script's. Still, the material is simply not good enough for 30 minutes here and I really hope Flanagan managed to step it up with the full feature. As for this film here, I was never scared and I was rarely entertained. The good thing is that the end is probably the biggest strength of the film after 25 minutes of boredom though, so that was not a big achievement exactly. All in all, a fairly forgettable film and I cannot say this got me curious at all about the director's other works. Not recommended.

I was lucky enough to see this wonderful film at the Dead by Dawn Festival at the weekend. Oculus is a cheaply made film which is visible from the start. But that doesn't effect the impact this film has on an audience. An antique mirror with deadly powers is tracked down by a guy who's been researching into the deaths of the past people who have owned it. Setting up an experiment, consisting of several cameras, various alarms, a plant, a dog and a white sheet, he sets out to reveal the mysteries of the mirror once and for all. This short had some exceptional parts in it. *SPOILER* The mirror people bellowing out the sound of the alarm is so cool, the mirror ghost suddenly appearing when the lights flash scared the s***t out of me, and the mirror itself - for an everyday inanimate object really does strike a nerve. *END OF SPOILER* This film; considering its low budget, and its average acting is a very powerful film that produces some strange and interesting ideas. I would recommend anyone to see this short if they get the chance, and as its part 3, hopefully the i'll someday get the chance to see 1 and 2 - fingers crossed!

We saw this short at the DragonCon Film Festival in Atlanta. This is a great brooding short that builds. The creep factor is very high, and it's heightened by the fact that we can see what's happening, but the main character can't.

I thought the beeping alarm clocks were a little too loud and therefore a little irritating, but I'm guessing that was the desired effect. This also could have been due to the sound at the venue where we saw it. It wasn't a great room for movies, acoustic-wise.

The make-up was very good, and the special effects were nice and creepy. Kudos to the team that created this, and we are looking forward to more installations!

One of my friends (zablalbaz) saw this at DragonCon and was raving about it. He managed to get it to show some of his friends. From all the hype he was giving it, I figured it was good, but did not believe it could have been *that* good. Some people say the alarms were too loud, but I think they were perfect. Amazing how a simple alarm clock can make you jump like that. I did notice how the video monitors have different things going on in them. Very freaky and scary, but not on a blood and gore scale. Very freaky on the paranoia and sanity of the mind spectrum. I was amazed at how well this film was at keeping my attention. Very tough to do for a 1 man star in a film. I cannot wait to see the full length feature films for this once completed. My wife was not very impressed by this film, she just thought the guy was insane and out of his head. But, you should watch it and decide for yourself.....insane, paranoid, or is the legacy true...

I recently saw this movie at a friends house and it proves the old adage "Small things come in little packages". The stark set, brilliant use lighting and sound make this a movie that keeps building until the final moments then leaves you wanting more.

Alone the entire time, Scott Graham has no one to play off of, to react to, or to use as crutch through the film. Further more he had no elaborate set to take the eyes off him putting him even further in the spotlight. He did a superb job carrying the movie by himself and I hope to see him in more things in the future.

This movie is not for the slasher/gore-fest crowd, but anyone that loves a well written, directed, and acted thriller will love this short film.