Oculus (2013)

"It was the mirror..."

This could have been a very good horror film. The central idea is sound, indeed very good, if a little derivative, and the performances (though Karen Gillen's accent slips) are generally good. This isn't, however, much of a start for Gillan's post-Doctor Who film career.

The concept- a mysterious mirror of a MacGuffin manipulates reality around it to cause murder, violence and gore and is resistant to scientific inquiry- is strong, and making the protagonists two siblings trying to make sense of their parents' deaths ten years previously increases the drama. The use of two parallel narratives, the present and the past, works well. The ending is particularly clever and horrific, with Tim being arrested for a murder he didn't commit in both time zones, and I love the philosophical implication that reality itself is subjective.

However, the realisation of this is hampered by the direction. Oh, it looks professional in its way, but it's over-glossy and suffers from that modern curse of MTV-derived directorial styles that simply don't work on a horror film. One is left to wonder just what a previous generation would have made of this script.

S. Darko (2009)

"...Then came the drugs. And anus sex."

This is possibly the most disappointing sequel of all time, far worse than the actually-almost-average Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2. Partly it's because of the superlative excellence of Donnie Darko, but this yawn-inducing and starless film is a crushing disappointment.

It's 1995. Donnie's little sister Samantha has run away from home and, scarily, is about the same age as I was in that year. She is, of course, alienated, but the visuals are different; the desert vistas of Utah rather than '80s Virginia weirdness, a vibe that reminds me very much of the video to the Smashing Pumpkins' "Today".

We have two girls on a road trip, evoking both On the Road and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, two novels that I read when I was about Samantha's age. Samantha and Corey proceed to involve themselves in a terminally dull plot with which I will not bore you; suffice to say that there are various inferior parallels to stuff that happened in the first film, and the ending is the same but with too much explanation, killing the beauty of it as the Force was ruined by Midichlorians, and with nowhere near the impact.

The soundtrack isn't as good either, although it's pleasant to be suddenly reminded that Whale's "Hobo Humping Slobo Babe" existed. Everything about the film compares unfaithfully to Donnie Darko, although at least there's some contemporary relevance to the character of Iraq Jack with all the damaged war veterans walking around these days.

Do yourself a favour; give this film a miss.