Box Office: Race for Number 1 Tight between 'Winter Soldier' and 'Rio'2

NOTE: Alignment may change first thing Monday morning

1. Captain America: The Winter Soldier- $41.3M/$159M
I don't think anyone's surprised that Steve Rodgers latest foray to the big screen has sat atop the box office for two weeks now. So what might surprise them? That Rio came close!

2. Rio 2- $$39M
With Cap's very adult themes and the almost enthusiastic response to the first movie (voiced by Jesse Eisenberg and Anne Hathaway) It was pretty much a given that this film would be at #2 or even in the top spot!

3. Oculus- $12M
Chack this one up to two things, poor planning and Captain America. Had this been released in February I think you would have had a hit on your hands. Still after you see Cap for the twelfth time give it a look see!

4. Draft Day- $9M
Kevin Coster's, Draft Day, which has been maligned and cringed at since the beginning of it's inception has stayed true to form and rounds out your list

5. Divergent- $7.5M/$124M (wait, 125 million, domestic!)

6. Noah- $7.6M/$84M

7. God's Not Dead- $4.485M/$40.7M

8. The Grandbudapest Hotel- $4M/$40M

9. Muppets Most Wanted-$2.1M/45M

10. Mr. Peabody and Sherman- $1.8M$105M

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Review: Oculus starring Karen Gillan and Brenton Thwaites

For every ten standard horror films there’s one that breaks the mold, these are your SCREAMs and A Nightmare on Elm Street (believe it or not that movie was pretty groundbreaking when it came out).  I’m not saying Oculus is on the level of those genre-changing films but it’s definitely right up there. On the surface you have a movie about an evil mirror that kills those who look on it, past that you have a movie that seriously treads the line on “Is this all just a figment of a disturbed imagination?” Let’s do some plot, Alan Russell (Rory Cochran) buys a mirror without checking the provenance, which would have told him the prior owners had a nasty nack for dying badly. What follows is a long bit of “All Work and No Play Make Alan GO CRAZY” leading up to the sound of some shots going off and Alan and his wife Marie (Katee Sackoff) dead and all things looking like Alan just went nuts. Their children, Tim and Kaylie, are both shipped off to different places with Tim going to a mental institution after receiving the blame for his father’s death. After he is released Tim (Brenton Thwaites) meets up with his sister Kaylie (Karen Gillan). Tim has spent years learning that the mirror was only a creation of his mind to deal with his father’s descent into madness, while Kaylie has been able to focus her time directly into believing in an evil mirror.

This is where the film really takes off, horror movies always play with the idea that “It’s all in your head”, but usually it’s in the form of some distrusting authority figures who we’re not supposed to take seriously, this movie has one of the main characters casting doubt. If that doesn’t make the water murky enough the trip results in the telling of the back story intercut with real time in such a way that the two begin to overlap and we really do begin to question the motive of the movie. The non-linear storyline is a touch that really makes you feel what the characters are feeling, it pulls you in to such a jarring state that you can understand the heights they are willing to go to and that they are having a hard time trusting their own eyes. Isn’t that everyone’s deepest fear, really? To not be able to trust your own senses knowing that you’re so sure of something but there’s an outside chance that you may just be losing your mind.  That’s a downright amazing touch right there…because it’s only when you feel truly safe that you can be properly scared.

This sounds like a very non-traditional horror movie, where are the scares? Don’t worry about that, there are more than enough creepy faces where there shouldn’t be and standard jump scares as well…but done in the right way. I’ve really found that jump scares are a necessity in horror films but you have to do them properly, in a not completely obvious way. Honestly though, it’s the psychological impact of Oculus that will leave you with the lights on, not the cheap scares.

I think Oculus, while not for everybody, is a must for all fans of the horror genre. This flick is the next in a progression of smarter horror films like Drag Me To Hell, or Cabin in the Woods. There is so much more to the film than I’ve even listed here, for the sanctity of spoiler-free, but as you slowly find yourself learning the truth of what happened that night you only go further down the rabbit hole. You’ll want to come back for more which, box office depending, was left wide open in the most clichéd part of the film…the final shot sequel establisher!

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Beware the Killer Mirror in New Trailer and Poster for Horror 'Oculus'

A few years ago there was a mid-level horror film called Mirrors, that rang up a pretty decent box office on the strength of its cast led by Kiefer Sutherland and Paula Patton. It wasn't especially memorable, but the one thing it did right was impart a valuable lesson that mirrors are not to be trifled with, and it has nothing to do with seven years of bad luck. But apparently that message wasn't learned by everybody, which is why movies like Oculus exist.

A new trailer, poster, and a handful of photos have been released for Oculus, a horror which generated some solid buzz among the TIFF midnight crowd. Directed by Mike Flanagan with Karen Gillan, Brenton Thwaites, Rory Cochrane and Katee Sackhoff starring, the film centers on siblings whose lives were ruined by a malevolent force unleashed through an antique mirror. Some folks never learn.

Oculus will hit up SXSW soon before opening in theaters April 11th.


Oculus - Official Trailer by Dread Central

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