Geekscape Reviews Mirrors 2 on Blu-Ray!
I didn’t see the Kiefer Sutherland vehicle Mirrors, nor any other film related to highly polished glass in at least 12, maybe 15 years, if ever. I remember some advertising, but avoided the cinematic masterpiece I’m sure that it was because the trailers gave off this vibe that made it seem like Sutherland was appearing in the movie in order to do someone a favor, or to pay off a gambling debt. I’ll go with the former, since I’m currently unaware of Jack Bauer’s illegal activities and would like to remain that way. So I can honestly say that I had no preconceived notions about Mirrors 2 when I sat down and viewed it on Blu-Ray. I’ll say this for the movie: it starts out strong.
A lone security guard (Evan Jones), obviously a bit dim, is on his nightly patrol in an expansive department store. There’s a creepy mood in the air as he approaches a large (you guessed it) mirror in the main display hall. He checks himself out and builds up his ego by talking to what he sees reflected in front of him. While perhaps a bit odd, it’s something I’m sure most of us can relate to.
Then events turn to the strange, and his reflection stops being exactly his reflection. It takes on a life of its own, picks up an errant piece of glass, puts the shard into its mouth, and starts chewing. He can only watch in horror as the gnashing in the mirror starts to cause his own mouth to bleed. The poor man attempts to scream, but it’s vanity as only blood escapes his throat through the many cuts and gashes in his now disfigured face. He collapses alone, while the geist in glossed glass grimly gazes at the guard with terrible smile on its face.
“Oh way to spoil the movie!” you might say. Yeah well, I did, but here’s the thing: That scene I just described, it’s by far the single best part of Mirrors 2, and it’s the opening. If you want to save yourself some trouble, find it on YouTube, and ignore the rest of the movie.
It’s not that the rest of the film is atrocious; it’s just quite possibly one of the most bland horror films one could see, but it only gets worse if you pick up the Blu-Ray. Not due to image or audio quality though, these are fine, but due to a different cause I’ll get to later. On to the main event!
“So you folks sell meandering plot here? And you want me,
In The Bedroom‘s Nick Stahl, to guard it at night?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“I hope you all die.”
“Don’t worry. Even if some of us survive, our careers won’t.”
Everything starts out promising enough. After that delightfully gory intro, we’re soon introduced to Max Matheson (Nick Stahl), a man recovering from a car wreck that took his girl and ruined his life. He worries to his shrink that he might be seeing things, a shrink who (of course) dismisses the notion (repeatedly), while his father (TV’s “Greatest American Hero,” William Katt) tries his best to be there for his son by giving him a job as the new night watchman at the Mayflower department store. The very same department store that contains the evil mirror from the opening scene! Bah buh buuuummmmmm!
Pretty soon though the plot just loses its steam. We’re introduced to exactly 4 other named characters (one of whom is Emmanuelle Vaugier) and before we get to know who they are, and what they’re doing in the damn movie, the same malevolent spirit that attacked the hapless sentry starts to terrorize and kill them. As the deaths start to pile up, we’re introduced to possibly the two worst movie detectives in film history (not evil, just inept, and not in a funny way) and Nick Stahl is led through some terrible plot devices to attempt to solve the “mystery” behind the mirror murders.
Though there are a few good moments here or there, and for the most part the characters act rather naturally, things just never pick up. Most of the film is shot in drab muted tones that don’t terrify so much as bore, and though the actors try hard, they’re hampered by a completely aimless script. The only noteworthy emotion that was generated from the film to me was ire, but mostly at seeing such a mediocre experience in such a high image quality (and at those terrible detectives). Any Sci-Fi (sorry, SyFy… *shudders*) original horror movie you’ll catch on an idle sick day looks far worse but has more spirit than this. And this is a movie with an actual spirit in it!
It comes to a conclusion that I can honestly say I didn’t see coming. But this is because I had already come up with a better version of the movie in my own head, and was pretty much rewriting the scenes as they came along in real-time. My version addressed such issues as: “Why would Nick Stahl’s father give him a completely dead end job as a means of helping him out if he runs the damn store? Especially if the last person on the job disappeared or possibly died? Does he just not like his son?”
I ran out of pictures from the movie. So here’s one of Emmanuelle Vaugier. That’s related. Sort of.
“Why would the directors only introduce 4 other characters in a supernatural mystery and then kill off two of them in twenty minutes? It makes it rather obvious who the bad guy is, so why not toss in a few more ancillary people to keep the audience guessing?”
“Why is this movie color corrected to the same gray-scale as every other American version of J and/or K Horror films? Do you think that every movie from Asia has to look like the U.S. release of The Ring? Even though the original Ringu had far more color to its overall palette?”
“Why can the evil spirit use pretty much any reflective surface if the damn movie is called Mirrors (2)? Shouldn’t it be limited to JUST mirrors? If not, what are the damn rules here?”
“Why the hell are Nick Stahl and Emmanuelle Vaugier in this film? Both are obviously doing the best with what they’ve got to work with, but Stahl spends most of the movie looking bored in a department store and Vaugier doesn’t even come into it until more than halfway through, and then once she does, she feels totally out of place.”
So yeah, obviously the movie was only able to grasp about half my attention. This is never a good sign, to say the least. Even this though, is not the worst of what the film has in store for you, oh no, gentle reader.
Into The Mirror is actually a good horror movie.
It’s a shame it had to be cannibalized into two forgettable remakes.
No, the worst part of the movie is that it comes packed in with a much better film. 2003’s original Into the Mirror comes straight out of South Korea and into the Blu-Ray as a fucking extra DVD special feature! It’s about a million times better than the movie you probably just watched, makes oodles more sense, has excellent cinematography and some fine acting and to put it simply, it works. To pack it in as a “bonus”, amongst the rest of the stuff on there (you get a standard “making of”, some deleted scenes, and a special FX featurette) when it’s far superior, and not give it the Blu-Ray HD boost is just insulting to both the original film and you at home! The marketing should be flipped, and Mirrors 2 should have had a riff track added and included with the grand American release of Into the Mirror!
In summation, Mirrors 2 isn’t worth your time, unless you want to pay a premium price on a DVD release of a far better film. If you want a great little horror movie featuring lots of glass, go find Into the Mirror instead. You can probably only get it on DVD, but that’s what you’ll be getting here too, so in the end you’ll just save yourself the cost of dead weight.
BASIC FACTS:
Rated: R
Run Time: 90 mins
Format: Blu-Ray
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Director: Victor Garcia
Screenwriter: Matt Venne
Cinematographer: Lorenzo Senatore
