In a vivid red and brightly gruesome death scene, a woman's mirror reflection pulls its mouth apart while leering at her lying in the bathtub; very, very far apart. As the reflection's mouth starts ripping into dripping, stringy tissue, so does the real one, sending a shower of blood in every direction. I blinked for a second, wondering whether this was really happening to her or just an illusion, like Ben Carson's (Kiefer Sutherland) incendiary mirror reflection encounter earlier in the film, which left him unnerved but not scorched. Whatever the smudgy black cloud in the mirror is, it can either make you imagine what it shows you is real, or make its diabolical reflections really happen. This time, her mouth stayed open; wide, wide open.
In director Alexandre Aja's version of Kim Sung-Ho's Into the Mirror, the mystery in Mirrors surrounds the bizarre actions of two former security guards making the rounds of a burned-out department store, in New York City (though primarily filmed in Romania), awaiting renovation. Carson is a suspended NYPD detective involved in an accidental shooting, now battling his retreat into a liquor bottle. He takes up the nightly routine to pay the bills, walking through the department store's charred hallways past the many scorched mannequins and large mirrors reflecting the destruction all around him, with his flashlight barely illuminating the darkness. A palm print on the surface of one squeaky clean mirror peeks his curiosity, and soon a dark force begins to exert its will on him through the glass, showing people in flames and sending him to the flooded basement where the answer to the mystery lies.
Evil mirrors have been a staple gimmick in cinema and literature, whether employed as evil-presence-in-mirror, or ominous gateway to another, less hospitable, world/dimension/time, or malicious tool wielded by some evil Mr. Goodwrench-type. Mirrors uses all of these conceits as Carson and his family are increasingly threatened by the malevolent force reaching out from behind the glass. Aja, and fellow scripter Gregory Levasseur, mix in young girl demonic possession from The Ring, a psycho mirror room like the one from the House on Haunted Hill remake, mean-spirited facial disfigurement from Poltergeist, and a muddled, downbeat ending similar to the disappointing one from Silent Hill. What they leave out are a sustained, suspense-building eeriness and coherence to sensibly explain how and why the malevolence is forcing Carson to find someone named Esseker. The story is further diluted when reflective water puddles and plain glass conveniently become the new gateways through which his family is attacked later in the film, after they paint over all the mirrors in their home.
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Article comments
1 - Chris Beaumont
Nice to see i wasn't the only one to think of Evil Dead!
Also, that building seemed really out of place in NYC and I did not like how the rules seemed to keep changing....
2 - ILoz Zoc
Hey Chris,
Yes, that building stuck out like a sore thumb. When it's mentioned that it's on 6th Ave, I laughed a little. Great building, but for a NYC audience, it made it hard to swallow the rest of the story.
You sum it up better than I did: the rules keep changing. That's the best way to put it, and it's something you see in a script that's not constructed well from start to finish.
3 - Derek Fleek
What can I say, I had a good time. As for the watered down Paula Patton, braless would have made this a must see. I still think it is worthy of a look.
4 - ILoz Zoc
Derek,
Amen to that. I really like Kiefer Sutherland. He keeps it interesting, and certainly it's worth a viewing, if not in the theater, on DVD. I just wish Aja would focus on the less commercial direction approach. He really is a good director.
5 - Chris Beaumont
I like both Haute Tension (despite the ending) and The Hills Have Eyes remake, plus P2 (which he wrote). This is definitely least among those other films.
I like Kiefer, and he has some nice line deliveries and moments, but this is not a good flick. Kiefer's performance reminds me of Michael Keaton in White Noise, they cut just as he was about to get interesting every time.
6 - assef fiestah
this movie sucked please dont watch it!