Mirrors (2008)
Mirrors
Directed By: Alexandra Aja
Cast: Kiefer Sutherland, Paula Patton, Amy Smart, Mary Beth Peil
Reviewed By: Ken Mooney
Rating: Two-Out-Of-Five Bananas
There comes a time in every actor’s life when they happen across that role they were just born to play, a character whose life becomes so intertwined with your own that it’s difficult to see where the two join.
Bear that in mind before you go to see Mirrors, the latest Hollywood take on Asian horror, based on 2003’s South Korean Into the Mirror and directed by the splat-pack’s very own Alexandre Aja, who previously gave us The Hills Have Eyes (remake) and Haute Tension” (also known as Switchblade Romance and High Tension in its UK and US releases.) In Mirrors, Sutherland plays Jack Bauer playing Ben Carson, a disgraced cop who takes a job as a security guard at a burnt out department store. As the mirrors in the store, and eventually outside, begin to haunt him and his family, he finds himself embroiled in a sinister, otherworldly plot. Something, apparently, is on the other side.
It’s all standard horror fare, somewhat disappointingly so. Despite excellent direction from Aja, Mirrors is never quite as creepy as it should be, settling for crashes and make-up effects that serve much more to make you jump at the suddenness of it all than being any way unsettling. The empty, dark department store (full of mannequins) is creepy in itself, but vastly and shockingly underused, while the mirrors are more of a means to an end than the title would have you think: for all the time Ben/Jack/Kiefer spends looking into mirrors, don’t try looking for something subtle in the reflections, because you won’t find it. If you’re lucky, you might comment on the fact that you can’t see any cameras or mics reflected but…that’s it, really.
Of course, ‘standard horror fare’ for recent years has meant a paper-thin plot that doesn’t hold together at the slightest examination, and it’s this that proves to be the film’s greatest failing. There’s an overabundance of two-dimensional stereotypical characters (Amy Smart in particular is criminally underused) and the plot makes as many leaps in logic as Ben/Jack/Kiefer’s own reasoning (despite taking medication, he sees one weird reflection and already adds up that the mirrors are evil?) It’s this that really lets Sutherland and co down, as he never really gets a chance to play anything that isn’t Jack Bauer, right down to walking around the department store, gun in one hand, torch in the other, wrist-over-wrist.
These poor characters don’t just come from watching too much 24’either: Peil’s character, a throwaway introduction in the film’s final fifteen minutes, is just as much of a last-minute inclusion as she sounds, lending no sense of mystery at all in a story that has just plodded along and never built any mystery to begin with. (It doesn’t help that she has three different turnarounds in motivation in those fifteen minutes.) Paula Patton, playing Carson’s estranged wife Amy, works wonders with a role that’s pegged on in a vain attempt to give Ben/Jack/Kiefer some motivation (I’m including the kids and Smart in this too) but is reduced to playing it angry and scared at various points that never quite work.
It’s all a disappointment by the time the final credits roll: while the final ten minutes pay off in some respects, they do little to rescue a plot that feels like three or four different films that have all been pegged together (and I don’t mean good films either.) Chances are, you’ll probably walk out of the cinema thinking and wishing that it could have been so much better.
Verdict:
A frustrating example of a very well made, but terrible film: think of it as Jack Bauer’s pre-school essay on What I Did On My Halloween Holidays.
Originally published on FrankTheMonkey.com