31 horror films you need to watch this October

Oculus

The Plot

An encounter with the haunted Lasser Glass destroys Tim and Kaylie’s family and childhoods, landing 10-year-old Tim in psychiatric care and Kaylie in the foster system. 10 years later the siblings are finally reunited when Tim is released from hospital having thoroughly convinced himself that the events of a decade ago were never supernatural; only to find that all this time Kaylie has been carrying a grudge against the mirror, and now that Tim is free, she wants him to help her destroy it.

The Breakdown

This movie is fascinating on a lot of levels. It’s told in two storylines, past and present; the horror of their childhood encounter with the mirror feeding into the horror of the present. Tim and Kylie are not just helpless victims who don’t realize they’re in danger until it’s too late; they survived the Glass once, and have the mental (and literal) tools to do so again. They know what to expect, and they know how to fight it; but the sheer power of the mirror, which has the ability to distort its victim’s perceptions until they kill themselves or each other, cannot be beaten simply by understanding it.

The story is quite meta, in a sense; Kaylie is aware of the risks of facing the glass and has prepared accordingly. She is almost aware of what genre she’s in, and has prepared for seemingly every possibility. Her driven, furious need to face and destroy the thing that destroyed her family forms a solid emotional center for the movie to build off of. And of course, Karen Gillan does an awesome job.

The Scare Factor

Mind-bending and memory-bending, this movie will keep you guessing. The most frightening elements are psychological, as the mirror continues to twist reality; and the ending is literally unforgettable.