In a move that mirrors Daniel Radcliffe, Doctor Who‘s Karen Gillan is stepping away from the sci-fi genre, if only for a moment, to star in a horror film about an evil mirror.
You won’t be seeing Amy Pond any time soon, and now that she’s gone, Karen Gillan has taken a breath of fresh air to do something wildly different from the family friendly BBC show Doctor Who.
Gillan’s next project, Oculus, is a horror movie where she plays Kaylie, a young woman who’s reuniting with her brother after he spent several years imprisoned for the murder of their parents. However, Kaylie doesn’t believe that her brother did this evil deed and instead blames evil forces unleashed by an antique mirror. Oculus is about Kaylie and her brother tracking down the mirror to find out the truth, which forces them to relive their childhood terrors.
It may be odd to see Gillan in a horror movie after so many years on Doctor Who, but Gillan grew up with horror movies, she tells Yahoo Movies, having seen The Exorcist at way too young of an age with her mother. In fact, when Gillan leaves for long trips, she insists that someone always come back into her home with her because she’s too scared to go in by herself. We feel you, Karen!
Fans of Gillan from Doctor Who shouldn’t be put off from the horror film, as another major sci-fi star makes an appearance in Oculus. Katee Sackhoff from Battlestar Galactica plays Kaylie’s mother in several flashbacks during the film, which helped Gillan establish her performance as the older Kaylie.
And don’t worry, this movie does’t have any evil wigs like this year’s Doctor Who Christmas special did. You’ll notice that Gillan has a full head of hair in this trailer, as this was before she shaved her head for the role of Nebulus in the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy movie.
Oculus opens in theaters on April 11. Gillan is the main character on the poster, which gives us ridiculously creepy Doctor Who monster vibes. It’s like a combination of a Weeping Angel and a Silence.
