I can understand someone having a mild panic attack while watching Mike Flanagan’s Oculus. It’s a tremendous example of escalating horror, deftly switching back and forth between to separate time periods that respectively see insanity and terror tear at the lives of the protagonists (and it doesn’t flinch when it comes to moments of mutilation). As scary as the movie is, however, that ironically had nothing to do with why star Katee Sackhoff had a full-on panic attack of her own while making it. Instead, that emotional incident can be attributed to her taking what she understood as a big step in her career.
Sackoff recently had the opportunity to reflect on her time making what turned out to be Mike Flanagan’s breakout film during a recent recording of her podcast The Sackoff Show with guest and fellow Oculus star Kate Siegel. The two actors have a wonderfully honest conversation together about their careers and experiences as mothers, and it opened the door for the host to talk about an emergency room visit she took due to a stint of being overwhelmed. She revealed,
I had a panic attack one night on Oculus. So bad they drove me to the emergency room… Because I was so insecure in sort of like stepping into that role. It was one of the first… She wasn’t the lead of the movie, but she was one of the leads of the movie. And I was scared. I was scared, especially when we started playing Marie in her primal place, I was really insecure.
As mentioned, Katee Sackoff plays Marie in Oculus – the mother of pre-teen Kaylie (Annalise Basso) and Tim (Garrett Ryan Ewald) in the film’s flashback storyline. Along with her husband Alan (Rory Cochrane), she is slowly driven insane by a haunted mirror called The Lasser Glass. At the time, Sackoff has already earned notoriety in her career playing Kara “Starbuck” Thrace on the remake of Battlestar Galactica, but Mike Flanagan’s horror movie was new territory for her, and it apparently freaked her out a bit.
Continuing, she explained that she had a positive time working with the film’s writer/director, but there was a particular day on set when she was wearing heavy makeup and the whole experience of making the movie got on top of her:
Mike was so wonderful in that situation because he was so supportive, and he was so collaborative, and it was such a wonderful experience. But I was terrified to do it. And one day I was sitting in my prosthetics like all day, and we had to shoot the kids out. And it’s not a ton of prosthetics; it was just like the scratches, but they were on my chest, they were on my face.
Apparently, that physical discomfort morphed into more emotional discomfort after the day was done on set. It got to a point where she felt the need to seek medical attention, and there was a member of the on-set transportation team who not only took her to see a doctor but stayed with her through the experience. Said Sackoff,
I was in them for a while, and I had like a claustrophobic weird thing sitting in my trailer that I went back to the hotel that night when we were wrapped out and done, and at the hotel I had a panic attack and transpo picked me up and drove me to the emergency room… He was wonderful though. The guy didn’t leave me, he stayed with me the entire time.
Between roles like the aforementioned Starbuck on Battlestar Galactica, Vic Moretti on Longmire, and Bo-Katan in the Star Wars universe, Katee Sackoff has a reputation for playing formattable characters, but her honesty about her emotional vulnerability in her conversation with Kate Siegel is really wonderful. Her exact experience isn’t something we can all relate to, but it’s certainly relatable generally, and it demonstrates the positives of discussing mental health.
She may have been overwhelmed at times making Oculus, but Katee Sackoff does great work in the movie – and it’s worth noting that the news broke this week that she is now set to reunite with both Kate Siegel and Mike Flanagan (and more members of the FlanaFamily) for the upcoming Carrie series based on the novel by Stephen King. If you’ve never seen Oculus or are feeling in the mood to rewatch, it’s currently available to stream for free with ads on Plex, you can rent/purchase it digitally, and it’s widely available on Blu-ray.
