On the surface Oculus
seems like a good creepy movie about a haunted mirror. The mirror possesses
people and corrupts them, making them do horrible things as if it was the One
Ring. I recently had the chance to re-watch this movie and I picked up on some
nuances that I missed before. This led me to a theory, which is really up to
the audience to conclude.
Is the mirror haunted
or is the Russell family mentally insane?
The movie jumps around a lot between the present and 11
years ago. In the beginning of the film we discover that Tim is being released
from a mental institution for killing his father and blaming the mirror. His sister, Kaylie, has been plotting to
reveal the supernatural nature of the mirror, which led to their father killing
their mother and inevitably forcing Tim to kill their Father. She has
researched the past of the mirror as well as set up a way to test the overall
ability of the mirror’s influence.
At this point, Tim has received psychological help. He no
longer believes that the mirror is haunted or possesses a power over anyone. In
fact, he is able to rationalize every statement Kaylie says with the facts that
the parents were having marital troubles and that the deaths of many of the
previous owners of the mirror were merely coincidence. On the other hand,
Kaylie has not received any psychological help and her delusions have been
allowed to grow over many years.
The parents could have easily been mentally unstable before
they encountered the mirror. The mother was clearly very depressed, thinking
that her husband was unfaithful. Meanwhile, her husband had become obsessed with
the mirror. He even began hallucinating. The stress caused her to snap and to
hallucinate as well. Her hallucinations ended in an attempt to kill the
children. The father, who was already losing his grip on reality, killed his
wife. Kaylie and Tim were already paranoid- a result of experiencing their
parents’ spiral into madness. Their stress pushed them well over the edge.
Finally, presently Kaylie has her chance to prove the mirror
is really supernatural. It doesn’t take a lot to push Tim back into his old
psychosis. Soon they are both seeing and hearing things that aren’t really
there. These illusions continue until Tim accidentally kills Kaylie when they
are both experiencing separate hallucinations. As Tim is taken away by the
police he “sees” the ghosts of the victims from the mirror. He then yells that
the mirror is responsible for everything.
Is the mirror supernatural in this movie? It might be. Could
the entire family simply be deluded because of mental illness, to think the
object is the cause of all their suffering? It’s possible. Either way, Oculus is a damn good movie that is
worth seeing and worth making that decision on your own.
