Running time: 110 minutes
Starring: Kiefer Sutherland, Paula Patton, Amy Smart, Jason Flemyng, Mary Beth Peil, Josh Cole
Rating 6 out of 10
Mirrors can be pretty scary things at the best of times, depending on your condition, but here they take on a whole new level of frightening. Based on the Korean film Into the Mirror, Mirrors is a supernatural thriller about an evil force that manifests itself in the reflection of mirrors, causing all manner of horrors to those looking into them. It's an intriguing enough premise and refreshingly different in a genre hardly known for innovation. The film also owes a large debt to its star Kiefer Sutherland who brings credulity to a role lesser talents would have failed to realize given the all-too clichéd dialogue. Mirrors also avoids being dismissed as totally predictable by a surprising twist at the end.
Like most horror films, Mirrors relies heavily on the use of sound effects of the creaking door variety and suspenseful music for its chills. I would be curious to see how frightening it would be set to a score of bubblegum pop music and silly noises. I suspect not very.
Sutherland plays Ben Carson, an ex NYPD officer who left the force after accidentally killing another policeman. Forced to find work as a security guard in order to support his estranged wife Amy (Paula Patton) and two young kids, he gets a job patrolling a burned out department store. The Mayflower had been set ablaze by a disturbed arsonist five years previously, killing dozens of people. Carson spends his shifts wandering its scorched interior with a torch that illuminates the grotesquely melted mannequins that still remain.
One of the Mayflower's few features to survive relatively undamaged is a number of large mirrors. Carson discovers they are possessed of strange forces that are trying to communicate with him. The etched name of "Esseker" appears in one, causing the ex-cop to use his connections to investigative the name's origins. He discovers the Mayflower was built on the site of an old psychiatric hospital where there had been strange experiments carried out on patients using . . . mirrors!
Co-written and directed by Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes), Mirrors doesn't bear up well under too much scrutiny, but providing you afford it a lateral scope of disbelief, it has enough armrest-clenching moments to keep it entertaining. And for light relief, there's plenty of gratuitous focus on Paula Patton's cleavage. The movies have long made creative use of mirrors, notably Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock, and while obviously Alexandre Aja is not in that league, his Mirrors is unlikely to disappoint those fright fans looking at it.
Kevin Murphy
Like most horror films, Mirrors relies heavily on the use of sound effects of the creaking door variety and suspenseful music for its chills. I would be curious to see how frightening it would be set to a score of bubblegum pop music and silly noises. I suspect not very.
Sutherland plays Ben Carson, an ex NYPD officer who left the force after accidentally killing another policeman. Forced to find work as a security guard in order to support his estranged wife Amy (Paula Patton) and two young kids, he gets a job patrolling a burned out department store. The Mayflower had been set ablaze by a disturbed arsonist five years previously, killing dozens of people. Carson spends his shifts wandering its scorched interior with a torch that illuminates the grotesquely melted mannequins that still remain.
One of the Mayflower's few features to survive relatively undamaged is a number of large mirrors. Carson discovers they are possessed of strange forces that are trying to communicate with him. The etched name of "Esseker" appears in one, causing the ex-cop to use his connections to investigative the name's origins. He discovers the Mayflower was built on the site of an old psychiatric hospital where there had been strange experiments carried out on patients using . . . mirrors!
Co-written and directed by Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes), Mirrors doesn't bear up well under too much scrutiny, but providing you afford it a lateral scope of disbelief, it has enough armrest-clenching moments to keep it entertaining. And for light relief, there's plenty of gratuitous focus on Paula Patton's cleavage. The movies have long made creative use of mirrors, notably Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock, and while obviously Alexandre Aja is not in that league, his Mirrors is unlikely to disappoint those fright fans looking at it.
Kevin Murphy
