My mind is a total mess after watching Alexandre Aja’s Mirrors because it tried to be so many different things and wound up making me happy then pissing me off then making me happy and then pissing me off again. Things seem pretty on par for decent horror as the ball gets rolling and then they pitter-patter off into boring obscurity. Some tension and drama jumps in midway through to make my heart sink, but then I remember this is supposed to be scary. All throughout there is a storyline dealing with marital and family problems, but again this is horror right? With such gems as The Hills Have Eyes, Haute Tension, and the underrated P2 under his belt, I sincerely hope this isn’t a reflection of things to come from Aja.
Ben Carson is an ex-New York police officer with a sordid past that he is trying to work through right now and it’s just not getting any easier. He wakes every morning to take medication and is currently sleeping on his sister Angie’s couch because his issues were too big for his family to handle. Carson is trying to get things back to normal and is still under investigation by the NYPD for a shooting he did so he gets a job as a night watchman at an old abandoned department store to make ends meet. Carson is taking over for the last night guard, a man named Gary Lewis, who seemingly had a strange obsession with the hundreds of giant mirrors in the old store. The day guard advises Carson to watch himself because things can get really creepy there at night “with all the mirrors.” Foreshadowing?
Carson soon learns what he was talking about as his first night on the job reveals some strange things going on inside the store and all of them are in relation to the mirrors. Besides some odd handprints appearing on the glass, burnt figures (victims of the fire that torched the store five years back) are showing up only in the mirrors but nowhere else. Carson even finds himself becoming a victim to the fire, but again…only in the mirrors. It starts getting to be too much and people begin dying due to what the mirrors are showing them and Carson knows he needs to find out what they want before his family and he himself end up the next victims. If only he could get someone to believe him and help him in his search, but lunacy is a more viable opinion of him then legitimacy.
Good God, this is just a mind-boggling trip to nowhere. Mirrors has its moments and there are times when it seems as if it will be a pretty damn cool film, but then it goes and takes that all away with drama or stupidity. Right now I’m going to get it out of the way and let everyone know that this is not a horror film. It may be marketed and sold as such, yet it is anything but. There are a few jump-scares thrown in here and there, but nothing else is even remotely scary here. Mirrors has a storyline that verges on the edge of a thriller/suspense film but it will never fit into the horror category. Let’s not forget that there is another storyline dealing with Carson’s alcohol problem and suspension from the police force and yet another pertaining to the family problems with his wife and kids. This film tries to throw way too much into a little over one hundred minutes yet show and tells us absolutely nothing. That may not make sense to you now, but watch it and you’ll see what I mean.
Moving on next to the horrible acting, writing, and direction in the film and that’s a whole other can of worms. Kiefer Sutherland is the only one who does even a remotely decent acting job but he is often plagued by the awful dialogue he has to deliver that is stupid and just makes no sense. Not to mention the giant plotholes left throughout the film by the words spoken from character to character. Oh my God, it would frustrate me so much to pick apart the contradictions and hypocrisy every five minutes, but I couldn’t help it. Paula Patton is just as useless and ridiculously bad here as she was in Déjà Vu so the writing and direction had no affect on her poor performance. Amy Smart looked fine in her small role before she was offed in one of the poorest examples of CGI I’ve seen in my life. And no that’s not a spoiler because anyone who ever saw the trailer for Mirrors knew it was going to happen and how as well.
Believe it or not there is a lot of potential here which is why I’m so shocked that this was so bad. You put together just a few of the elements for a horror film on the table and ask someone to put them together; I’d take your word that it would be an awesome flick by putting it in the hands of Alexandre Aja and an accomplished actor like Sutherland. Still they managed to take a decent idea, some good actors, and a good direction and throw it all down the toilet. I take that back, forgive me. The opening of the film and the final twenty minutes are pretty good actually. Just take away the monotonous, pointless, repetitive, and miserably boring middle portion and you’ve got yourself a pretty decent short film. I still won’t ever call it horror though.
Oh and one more thing and this is what pissed me off the most about this film: if your film is all about mirrors and reflections and seeing things and the like, then don’t go giving your viewers something to work with that will never come to fruition. The whole “Esseker” thing just got under my skin. From the moment I heard it, I automatically assumed that is was something in reverse that needed to be figured out. A time came when I almost got out of bed and got a pen and piece of paper to reverse the letters thinking it was too complex to do in my head. Nope. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Don’t give me mind games to play that aren’t really mind games.
Mirrors is shown in 2.40:1 Anamorphic Widescreen format and most everything looks fine. The film is overly dark which is to be expected, but everything can be seen at all times. And while it’s not a production value issue; Mirrors has some really bad special effects and CGI so don’t think it is the DVD or your player because it isn’t. The effects in the film really are just that bad.
Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound helps the booms and the blasts surround the room with great bass and even let the small sounds from around every corner sneak up on you. Sutherland is a tad hard to hear at times but that is mostly because he’s always either yelling (which sounds fine) or whispering, and nothing in between.
D-Box Motion Code is also available for those with the capabilities to use it.
Reflections: The Making of Mirrors Shockumentary – Interviews and behind the scenes footage fills up this “making of” featurette which is very detailed and quite good. Aja and others start out discussing how Mirrors came from the Korean film off which it is based call Into The Mirror. I’m going to have to pick that up and hope it is better then this. Some interesting things are revealed here and there is actually a comparison to this remake calling it “like a chance to redo The Shining.” Really? A lot more of this featurette discusses the important of mirrors in everyday life and how we don’t always realize that they are everywhere. I really enjoyed this featurette for the amount of time given to it and the quality with which it is put together. (48:40)
Anna Esseker Hospital Footage – Old school looking footage of Anna Esseker as a young child and then confined in the hospital. This is some good stuff here. No sound but faint music playing in the background and creepy as hell footage. (5:33)
Behind The Mirror Featurette – Folklorists, experts, and historians veer away from the film here to explain the significance of mirrors and how they are almost the perfect setting for a horror movie. Any references to the film are done by the cast and crew while the experts would rather give facts and information from the past. Another good featurette. (18:22)
Animated Storyboard Sequence – Here is an animated sequence depicting the jaw-ripping sequence in the film. (1:19)
Deleted Scenes and Alternate Ending – Director Alexandre Aja and writer Gregory Levasseur are available here for optional commentary. There are a handful of deleted scenes here that deal mostly with the beginning of the film and Carson getting his job at the abandoned department store, the Mayflower. Aja and Levasseur add some decent commentary to go along with everything so it’s worth giving them a listen.
Blu-Ray BONUSVIEW – Aja and Levasseur sit down for a commentary track that can be seen picture-in-picture with additional footage and other such things while watching the film. In the lower right hand corner of the screen, a small box will appear from time to time to show how some of the effects were done along with other numerous situations. The commentary track itself is pretty good because they are constantly talking with one another and offer up a lot of information to the plot which is good considering the plotholes presented. This feature is only available on the theatrical release.
Blu-Ray BONUSVIEW – Another picture-in-picture feature is a storyboard to scene comparison in which the box in the lower (and sometimes upper) right hand corner will show small portions of the storyboards every now and again while the finished scene is taking place. I would have liked this a little bit more had it been continuous instead of so sporadic.
Digital Copy – The entire second disc is devoted strictly to the digital copy that is there for use on your portable players.
Trailers – Max Payne, The X-Files: I Want To Believe, and Valkyrie
I wanted so much to enjoy Mirrors more but they just kept making it impossible for me to have fun with it for more then five minutes at a time. It has a novel concept with the mirrors thing (even if it is ripped from a Korean flick), but they failed to provide any horror and even worse, any entertainment. Explaining anymore as to what went wrong is a lot easier then explaining what went right because one list is thirty-eight pages long while the other is a paragraph. Somehow though they compensated for the lack of quality in the film by bulking up on the special features that provide a great job of making a crappy picture seem decent. I’m not so sure I can even go as far as to recommend a rental of this because you’re sure to be seeing double (sorry) after your eyes cross from rolling them so much due to the sheer lunacy. My impression (sorry again) is that Aja wanted to throw a little crap into his repertoire so that expectations of him won’t always be so high. Duplicating (SORRY) this awfulness will be hard for him or anyone around.
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20th Century Fox presents Mirrors. Directed by: Alexandre Aja. Starring: Kiefer Sutherland, Amy Smart, Paula Patton, Cameron Boyce, Erica Gluck. Written by: Alexandre Aja & Gregory Levasseur. Running time: 110 minutes on 2 discs. Rating: Unrated. Released on DVD: January 13, 2009. Available at Amazon.com
