Mirrors
Movie Review
"Mirrors"
Review by Eric D. Snider
Grade: C
Rating: R
Released: Friday, August 15, 2008
Directed by:
Cast:
"Mirrors" operates on two creepy devices that have long been staples of horror movies. One is where a movie character looks into her bathroom mirror, looks away, and when she looks back again there is someone behind her. The other device, less common but still a classic, is the one where someone moves but his reflection in the mirror doesn't. The idea of your mirror image acting independently from you is profoundly unsettling.
The effect wears off when it's overused, though, and "Mirrors" really doesn't have much up its sleeve other than parlor tricks and gimmicks. It's based on a Korean film called "Into the Mirror," and like most Asian-horror remakes it boils down to a simple formula: Weird stuff happens; the hero determines that an angry spirit is seeking vengeance; the hero must finish the spirit's business or pacify it in some other way; the end. Given the skimpiness of the story, the film ought to have been wrapped up in a lot less than 110 minutes.
Kiefer Sutherland stars as Ben Carson, a former NYPD detective now on leave after a shooting. His guilt and alcoholism have fractured his marriage to Amy (Paula Patton), a medical examiner, and he's been sleeping on the couch at his sister Angela's (Amy Smart) apartment. He barely gets to see his children (Erica Gluck and Cameron Boyce).
Desperate for work, Ben takes a job as a night watchman at a burned-out department store awaiting renovation. Dozens were killed in the blaze some years back, and Ben almost instantly starts seeing weird things in the mirrors that still occupy almost every wall in the building. It would seem that rather than reflecting what's in front of them, the mirrors are playing back things that happened in the past. After a particularly unsettling bout with the devil-mirrors and their hellish images, Ben says, "F*** this place," which is something that you'd think people in movies like this would say more often.
It's at the film's halfway point that Ben says to an incredulous Amy, "What if the mirrors are showing something that's beyond our reality?" He has correctly summarized the situation, but obviously it sounds crazy. (Later, Amy wails, "I should have believed you!," and I thought, "Really? When he was saying the mirrors were trying to kill him?") The rest of the film has him switching into Jack Bauer mode: learning the truth, demanding answers from reluctant sources, and shouting into cell phones. This is an improvement over the first half, where he just runs around the dilapidated department store screaming like a ninny and firing bullets into unbreakable mirrors.
The film was directed by French sicko Alexandre Aja ("High Tension," "The Hills Have Eyes") and written by him and Gregory Levasseur, his usual collaborator. This is three films in a row from Aja that demonstrate his technical skill while squandering his potential. "Mirrors" mostly avoids over-the-top grotesqueness (save for one genuinely jaw-dropping scene), and it does not wallow in violence as much as Aja's previous work did. But the story itself is unoriginal, and the more details we learn, the sillier the whole thing sounds. It has a few tense moments, a couple mild scares, and that's it.
Grade: C
Rated R, a fair amount of harsh profanity, brief partial nudity, lots of gory images and some horrific violence
1 hr., 50 min.
Copyright © Eric D. Snider.
This work may not be transmitted via the Internet, nor reproduced in any other way, without written consent from Eric D. Snider.
This item has 3 comments
August 21, 2008 at 12:05 am
"Ut-oh - not good - NOT good... we got MIIRRRRRROOOOOORS!!" hehehe
I completely agree with this review.
August 21, 2008 at 5:43 am
So do the individuals themselves get attacked by the things in the mirrors, or do they try to solve crimes based on watching the things in the mirrors?
August 22, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Man, I almost want to see this movie just to see him say "F*ck this!* Seriously, why do people not exploit that sense of reality in horror stories more, it makes for one little bit of hilarity surrounded by otherwise tense situations. Which makes it great, in my opinion.
For example, a friend of mine was recently in a film that just had its premiere a few weeks ago (a smaller independent film called The Season) which was a somewhat mediocre horror flick about a killer Amish family that sabotages travelers' cars (they run a prehistoric-looking gas station ... for some reason) so they are forced back to their creepy farmhouse where they are subsequently tortured, raped, and murdered ... all for the sake of breeding desirable outsider traits into the Amish family. They're inbred babies kept dying, you see, and they needed some fresh DNA. But anyway, there is one victim, a guy, who constantly is saying things that you know the audience is thinking. They're great one-liners, that make the character amazing. They're hiding, watching the Amish perform some creepy ceremony and the guy says "Who ARE these people??" Later, I believe he even says something along the lines of "F*ck this place", something along the lines of you can go save those other people if you want, but I'm friggin outta here.
He had others, but I don't remember them at the moment. But he was funny in the midst of a horror plot, and it made him stand out, made the situations seem a little more realistic, because that's what a lot of real people would do, not investigate further. It makes it even more scary when somebody who's more realistic gets involved deeper in the horrific elements, because he's not just some actor, he seems more like a real person.
This turned into one big ramble, and I apologize. :)