Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Surprisingly Not Terrible

Mirrors

Keifer Sutherland takes a break from saving politicians to take on a group of reflective surfaces. Mirrors was surprisingly well made. The scary parts are definitely scary. The characters are believable. The plot holes are minimal.

An ex-NYPD officer gets a job working night security for a fire damaged department building. He replaces a man who had recently killed himself (in a terrifying opening scene). The first thing he notices is how clean all the mirrors are. The first thing I would have noticed was how many creepy-ass mannequins are lying all over the place.

The movie gets pretty creative towards the end when Keifer and his family realize that these demons can travel through any sort of reflective surface or substance (i.e. H2O). I'll bet the producers decided that Water and Mirrors sounded way too Bergman for American audiences. Just kidding, producers wouldn't know Bergman.

Here's how the movie breaks down the terror: mirrors for men; water for women. Broken glass shard wounds: for the men. Soaking wet white tops: for the ladies. For example:

[Pictured Above: (Left) Man slicing throat with glass. (Right) Hottie in wet, white top.]

That being said, the film was much better than expected. Does it objectify women? Sure, but not nearly as often as it objectifies demons. It seemed like every other shot had some offensive characterization of a demon. Everyone know they don't look like they do in Mirrors. They look like this:
So, while that may be a problem for some, most horror fans will probably find Mirrors to be a cut above the rest as far as recent scary movies go. The poster made it seem as though another - Japanese girl with wet hair who makes too much eye contact with you while standing outside your elevator window on every floor as it makes its way down to the apartment building lobby - type of movie. But it wasn't. The only girl with wet hair was this one:

Like I said, Mirrors was better than expected. The scary parts were scary. The characters were believable. And to top it off, Jennifer Connolly didn't star in it.

4 comments:

11 Word Movie Reviews/Son of Double Feature said...

I might have to write a blog about this too. I was greatly surprised by how much "Awake" didn't suck.

Kimberly Grafton said...

Ugh. Jennifer Connolly should NOT be in horror movies, except as the stupid chick that follows the creepy noise and gets killed in the first five minutes.

Keith said...

Alexandre Aja actually has a bit of talent in him, despite what The Hills Have Eyes remake may lead you to believe. I really enjoyed High Tension once I got a hold of an uncut French language version.

I haven't seen Mirrors yet, but it looks like it could maybe hopefully have a little potential.

I also like how they keep trying to deny the fact that they ripped off Into the Mirror, despite the fact that they clearly did.

elgringo said...

Haha, the plot description of Into the Mirrors:

An ex-cop now working as a security guard in a shopping mall tries to uncover the secret behind a series of mysterious deaths linked to mirrors.

Sounds familiar.