Imposters #47: Oculus

Oculus has a solid portrait-style poster - the image is hard to see, which makes it inherently creepy, and since The Ring we've all known pale girls are terrifying, so...

No seriously, we have a young teen seeming very scared, while an even younger boy hides behind her back. Both of them are looking at something that scares them.

The widescreen poster looks worse, of course. It uses negative space well, but the image of the mirror is cut off, which definitely limits the information imparted to the viewer. The kids remain compelling, but the pic loses all confidence.

The problem here - if there is one - sort of supersedes the promotional graphic, though. Why the hell do you name your motion picture "Oculus?" I think to myself that I know it's Latin, for "eye" or "vision," that it means something that one looks through.

Do you choose that title because it will be creepy for people who barely know what it means? I guess its brevity works in its favor, then... But I have think that if this were made a couple of decades ago, the title would be something like Oculus: Vision of Evil or Oculus: The Hidden Terror.

So I looked the word up:

Etymology: Latin, literally, eye
Date: 1848
1 : a circular or oval window 2 :a circular opening at the top of a dome

As a final note, let's look at the text here. The "producer" part does nothing for me, because lots of people in Hollywood produce lots of films. Insidious is supposed to be good/decent, but I've never seen it; Paranormal Activity means "suck" in my book, so that's not going to get me into theaters.

Yet the tagline is nice and creepy, and the twitter hashtag is actually pretty decent.