HoopTober 8: Mosquito Takes Mandragon

Movie 39
3rd of 4 haunted house films

Despite being quite a fan of the Mike Flanagan films I’ve seen already – and I have seen quite a few – for some reason I was in so great hurry to watch Oculus. I think I assumed it might just be another vanilla spooky movie – something for Flanagan to just cut his teeth on as he paid his early career dues. Nothing particularly representative of his specific voice.

I don’t know where I got that impression, but the early scenes of the film seemed to support it. I wasn’t aware that it starred Karen Gillan, which might have induced me to watch this sooner - don’t you think she just has the most amazing screen presence? I’m trying to figure out whether she really is a good actor or if it’s just that I fancy her. Her hair alone is dazzling to me.

Anyway, as the film went on, I was surprised at how dark it gets. I mean, I expected the effective creepiness – whatever else you might think of Mike Flanagan, if you’ve seen The Haunting of Hill House you know just how good he can be at scaring the fuck out of you with a masterful jump scare – in fact I’ve noticed no one calls them “jump scares” in that show because they are so beautifully done, but that is what they are, and that’s not a bad thing in my book. And Oculus has many of those moments, often involving the equally mesmerizing (to me) Kate Siegel (who seems to be Flanagan’s muse) as the malevolent presence.

Quick aside: despite me selecting this movie as one of my “haunted house” films for HoopTober, it was only upon watching it that I realized it is about a haunted mirror and really can’t be called a haunted house movie at all. Given I had no idea what the film was about, I don’t know how I even selected it now, but I suspect it was on a random Haunted House movie list on Letterboxd. Don’t trust strangers, kids.

Yes, it is full of good scares, but what I really found frightening about this was the way it treated the idea of possession. And this is odd, because this is such well-worn horror territory. But somehow, the actions of the characters who come under the sway of the evil presence in this film were particularly disturbing to me. Maybe it’s the destruction of the family unit, in such a devastating and horrifying fashion, which somehow brought this home to me. Maybe I’m more frightened of the idea of a mother forcing herself to eat glass and pottery than I am of a little girl being possessed by Satan – both horrific concepts of self-mutilation, but the girl-in-the-bed has generally left me unaffected because it feels like weird Christian propaganda.

Having said that, the sudden bleakness of the ending left me winded. Jesus, Mike, way to kick me in the balls, dude!

This is actually a pretty great horror film. You should check it out if you have any interest in Flanagan or scary movies in general. For some reason, the blu ray is cheap as fuck, so if you can’t find it streaming (or it’s expensive) my suggestion is to pick one up, because it seems to have quite a few special features. I’ll be checking those out on a rewatch at some point, I suspect. Good stuff.