[Oculus] [Spoilers] -- Tim knew exactly what he was doing in the final scene.

Spoilers disclaimer: Seriously, go watch Oculus. It's great.

I absolutely loved Oculus from the first time I saw it in the theater, but I walked away with a nagging feeling that there were hints in the movie about what was actually happening. I think I found a big one after watching it for the 4th or 5th time.

The movie establishes one reliable source of truth: electronically recorded video. In the universe of the movie, phone cameras, video cameras, and any sort of screen are the only reliable source of what's actually happening which is unaffected by the mirror or someone's subjective flashbacks. The movie goes pretty far out of its way to show that this is the case, actually.

So now fast forward to the end of the movie right before Tim is about to trigger the experiment's kill switch. (If you'd like to watch this part at home, start at the end of where the mirror's victims are buzzing like an alarm clock.) There's a few shots which show that the computer monitors are currently displaying the whole top half of the mirror, right where Kaylie's head would be.

As Tim approaches the killswitch dial, two things are apparent:

1: He can see the computer monitor from where he's standing; in fact, it would be difficult not to. If that's not enough evidence because he's looking in the direction of the mirror, there's a few frames right before a cut where he may be glancing at the monitor.

2: He takes a few moments to decide whether he's going to throw the switch as he stares in the mirror's direction. Why? Barring the mirror trying to sway his actions, if the mirror's right there and he accepts that it's evil at this point why does he stop to think? My theory is that there's been two possible antagonists the entire movie: One of them might be an evil mirror that makes people hallucinate, and the other might be his sister who is insistent on dragging him from a state of recovery into justifying her own repressed psychosis. He's making a really tough judgment call...

When he throws the switch he makes a bold, informed decision: His sister is the evil in the house, not the mirror.

Submitted December 25, 2014 at 09:15PM by mooglespy http://ift.tt/1vfZTfQ