fertilecelluloid Review of Mirrors

Mirrors (I) (2008)

Sad reflection of where mainstream US horror movies are at

[2/10 · 1 September 2008]

Alexandre Aja's "Mirrors" is a sad reflection (did I actually say that?) of where American horror movies are at -- at least the ones getting wide releases. Of course, much better stuff like "Inside" gets dumped straight to DVD because A)It's not "American", B)The French characters don't speak "American", and C)It's too "extreme" for horror fans(!). This film from the overrated director of "The Hills of Eyes" is just depressing. Keifer Sutherland, who can't do anything with a terribly obvious script, starts work as the night watchman of an abandoned department store in New York. He starts seeing weird images in the surviving mirrors in the old store and is soon telling everybody around him that the mirrors are out to get him. What the hell made Alexandre Aja think that this would make a scary movie, let alone a good movie? It's the worst idea in recent history. It does for mirrors what "Dead Silence" did for puppets. There is a ridiculous backstory that tries to explain what's going on in the mirrors, but you won't give a flaming f*** as you try valiantly to exorcise the insidious boredom from your brain. The film has half a dozen climaxes and gore that belongs to another movie. It's a misfire in every department. Aja's sense of judgement stinks, so I'm not looking one bit forward to his "Piranha" remake. The genre is scraping the bottom of the leaking barrel.