SINGAPORE — A haunted antique mirror that drives men and women to murder and suicide? At first glance, the premise of Oculus seems to have the makings of a C-grade horror movie. But on deeper reflection, director and co-writer Mike Flanagan’s steadfast serious-faced approach actually pays off, thanks to his seamless cross-cutting editing skills and his small band of adult and child actors who deliver a well-acted and unsettling take on some familiar horror ideas.

Based on Flanagan’s own 2006 short Oculus: Chapter 3 — The Man With The Plan, the movie tells the story of siblings Kaylie, who blames a haunted mirror for her parents’ deaths, and Tim, who wants to put his family’s traumatic past behind him following years of psychiatric treatment.

Karen Gillan (of television’s Dr Who) and Brenton Thwaites do a commendable job of showing the disparate personalities of the siblings. But it’s Annalise Basso and Garrett Ryan, the kid actors playing the characters’ younger versions, who more than up the fear factor with believable terror in their eyes.

Cross-cutting between time periods is never easy and Flanagan’s skill in shifting so frequently and so smoothly between past and present is a massive key element in the movie’s tense build-up.

Ultimately, it didn’t deliver with a final resolution that felt a tad of a letdown but Oculus is one of the better horror films in a recent slew of bargain bin choices. It won’t haunt anyone’s nightmares the way last year’s The Conjuring did but with its purposeful hallucinogenic plunge down the fuzzy line of perception and reality, it’s worth a trip to the cinema.

(NC-16,103min)