Netflix Officially Adds One of Mike Flanagan's Most Disturbing Horror Movies

Mirrors are weird, aren't they? They can see around things when they shouldn't be able to. They're creepy enough as it is. But then you realize that yours can actually manipulate reality, drive people insane, and potentially murder your entire family. It's worth taking the seven years of bad luck to get rid of it, that's for sure.

Seeing is deceiving in this disturbingly original horror flick that reflects heart-stopping terror. It's been ten years since the lives of siblings Tim and Kaylie Russell were shattered and Tim was convicted of murdering their parents. Now released from a mental institution, Tim wants to move on, but his sister has other plans. Kaylie blames their childhood nightmare on the Lasser Glass, an antique mirror with a grisly history, which she intends to destroy by any means possible, even as the mysterious entity continues to cast sinister spells on anyone who gazes into it. That's what awaits everyone who lays their eyes upon Mike Flanagan's (The Haunting of Hill House) Oculus, which officially landed on Netflix in the United States on September 24.

The cast is led by Karen Gillan (Doctor Who) as Kaylie Russell and Brenton Thwaites (Titans) as Tim Russell, alongside Katee Sackhoff (Battlestar Galactica) as Marie Russell, Rory Cochrane (Argo) as Alan Russell, Annalise Basso (Snowpiercer) as young Kaylie, Garrett Ryan (Insidious: Chapter 2) as young Tim, James Lafferty (One Tree Hill) as Michael, and Kate Siegel (The Haunting of Hill House) as Marisol.

How Good Is 'Oculus'?

Oculus currently holds a strong 75% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes from 156 reviews, which isn't bad going for a movie whose primary antagonist spends most of its runtime hanging silently on a wall. It's also fascinating to revisit knowing what Flanagan would do next. The director went on to make Hush, Gerald's Game, Doctor Sleep and The Life of Chuck, alongside Netflix series including The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, and Midnight Mass. It was a tidy box-office success as well. Oculus earned $27.7 million domestically, with Flanagan taking a relatively contained supernatural premise and turning it into the movie that helped establish him as one of modern horror's most interesting filmmakers.

Oculus is streaming now on Netflix.