With Halloween right around the corner, a bye week for the Rebels, and midterms out of the way, it is the perfect time to watch horror movies and get in the holiday spirit. Netflix offers a large collection of scary movies, but it’s tough to find movies worth your time. Luckily, I did it for you and watched “The Babysitter” and “Oculus” this week.
‘Oculus’
“Oculus” (2014) is about a haunted mirror. As strange as it sounds, I enjoyed this movie a lot, even as someone who is generally not a fan of supernatural horror films. The movie follows two timelines: the present and flashbacks to eleven years earlier.
Two siblings, Kaylie (Karen Gillan/Annalise Basso) and Tim (Brenton Thwaites/Garrett Ryan) believe their family was haunted by an antique mirror as children. When their dad Alan (Rory Cochrane) buys the mirror, strange things start happening around the house. Plants die, a dog goes missing and the parents begin to see things that are not there. Conflict in the family leads to violence. The children are separated and do not see each other again for eleven years.
By then, Kaylie is working in an auction house and has managed to track down the mirror. Tim begrudgingly agrees to help her in her scheme to see if the mirror has powers. They place thermometers, cameras, plants and a kill switch and set out to reveal the mirror’s abilities.
There is a lot of good to say about this movie. The atmosphere of the movie is very dark and haunting. A lot of the movie is tense, and the jump scares are well-thought-out. The movie isn’t fast paced, which adds to the horror by really getting into your head.
I didn’t expect much going into this movie, and I realized early that I was too quick to judge. This is a must-watch if you haven’t seen it yet.
‘The Babysitter’
“The Babysitter” (2017) is about a young boy who realizes his babysitter is part of a satanic cult, and this Netflix Original is as stupid as it sounds. I wanted to give this movie a fair chance, considering I had just enjoyed a movie about a haunted mirror, but I found this movie way too generic. Playing off an attractive cast, bad jokes and extreme gore, I find it hard to recommend this movie. There are much better horror movies on Netflix this Halloween, like “The Shining,” “The Conjuring,” “The Witch” and “Hush.”
