You’ll be watching through your fingers

The idea of a haunted mirror doesn’t seem too scary — not unless you’ve been in a department store dressing room lately, trying on bathing suits.

Still, there’s plenty to rattle you in Oculus, a supernatural thriller that doesn’t make 100 per cent sense, exactly, but leaves you deeply disturbed.

It’s about an antique mirror with enough paranormal abilities to have caused the death of 45 people over the centuries, not to mention a number of houseplants ( it sucks water out of the air) and many dogs, which it appears to eat.

Go ahead and scoff, but you’re going to be watching the last reel of Oculus through your fingers.

It starts with the release from St. Aidan’s Mental Facility of Tim ( blandly handsome Brenton Thwaites), just turning 21, who seems cured 11 years after he murdered his father. Tim is picked up by older sister Kaylie ( Karen Gillan) who is still disturbed by the old events.

“I found it,” she whispers to him. “What?” he asks. “You know,” she says, somewhat madly. We soon find out. Director and co- writer Mike Flanagan takes us back to the old family home where Tim and Kaylie’s parents ( played by Katee Sackhoff and Rory Cochrane) died.

It was a gruesome business, too: Dad tortured mom to death before Tim shot him in self- defence, or perhaps Oedipal rage. Kaylie blames the mirror that hung in dad’s office.

She has researched the mysterious object and set up a psychic investigation lab to prove her case.

Oculus moves back and forth in time from this to the old days when dad is becoming increasingly obsessed with his office and mom is becoming increasingly convinced he has some kind of mistress in there with him.

We watch the younger Tim and Kaylie ( played by Garrett Ryan and Annalise Basso) as they witness the increasingly bizarre behaviour of their parents. The mirror itself isn’t much of an antagonist, but its effects play out in frightening dream logic as Tim and Kaylie are tricked by spirits or visions, or perhaps madness.

Flanagan keeps tight control on the material even as Oculus begins to shatter in several directions, a metaphor for the broken family, perhaps.

The mirror never comes alive as an object of frights, but the very madness of its mood should keep you out of that dressing room for a few weeks.