Starring Kiefer Sutherland, Paula Patton, Amy Smart
Director: Alexandre Aja
Studio: Regency/20th Century Fox [Release date: Jan. 13, 09]
Video: 2.40:1 anamorphic/enhanced for 16:9 color 1080p HD
Audio: English DTS-HD Master Audio, DD 2.0, Spanish or French DD 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean
Extras: Both Orig. Theatrical Version & Unrated (longer) Version, “Reflections: The Making of Mirrors,” Anna Esseker Hospital Footage, “Behind the Mirror” featurette, Animated storyboard sequence, Deleted scenes and alternate ending with optional director’s commentary, “Bonusview” – PIP with commentary, D-Box Motion Control Systems encoding, Digital standard-def disc for portable media players
Length: 111 minutes
Rating: ****
This is another Asian horror film remake for American audiences; the original was Into the Mirror, a 2003 South Korean film. Aja is considered a good direction of this sort of horror. Not being a horror film aficionado I would suggest most people should select the theatrical option and not the longer unrated version since it contains some very gross and bloody scenes that are not required to progress the story line.
Sutherland’s Ben character is not unlike the one he inhabits in 24 in the aspect of having heavy guilt over something he perhaps did wrong in the line of duty – in this case accidentally shooting a fellow detective. He is forced to take a night watchman job at a giant burned-out NYC department store which has no electricity and everything is wrecked – except the many mirrors which are strangely clean and polished. He is also separated from his wife and two children due to his heavy drinking and inability to find a job after he was dropped from the police force. He is staying temporarily with his sister.
It turns out that the night watchman who set the fire had first killed his family, and the last night watchman since the fire was found with his throat slit. There’s plenty of opportunity for spooky searching of the creepy premises with flashlight – lots of burned-out dummy figures abounding, plus a flooded basement due to a leak. (The Korean original had a modern rebuilt department store, so Mirrors goes one better in the set design area. The interiors were mostly shot in Rumania and the credits read like Dracula’s entire extended family were on the crew.)
Mirrors have been portals to alternate worlds in many movies, including the Jean Cocteau classic Orphée. It soon becomes clear that evil forces are behind those mirrors and that they can manipulate reality – even transport themselves to the mirrors in the home of Ben’s family and threaten them. The mirror beings seek someone called Esseker, and Ben turns to his detective skills to track down who or what that is. Relevant social commentary comes up in the scenes of the 12-year-old Esseker girl who had been diagnosed as schizophrenic and passed on to a strange psychologist who used a treatment consisting of confining such patients in a mirror-lined room. Guess where the room was. (Better stop here or I’ll need a spoiler alert…)
The creepy store interiors are well done, probably involving a good deal of CGI to avoid reflections of lights and cameras on all the mirrors. Unfortunately there are a number of very grainy shots that probably wouldn’t be noticed in the standard DVD version. One of the elements that ties together the story most effectively is the threatening classical theme which is heard again and again thruout the score. It is Asturias, by Isaac Albeniz, and the gripping orchestral playing of the City of Prague Philharmonic is central to the success of the soundtrack, as it has been to many other films and soundtrack CDs. The DTS lossless soundtrack is also vital in providing convincing creepy sounds inside the ravaged department store. I had considerable difficulty navigating the extras on the disc, though I have the latest firmware installed in my Blu-ray player. I think I saw the alternate ending which was nixed in favor of the one used in both the theatrical and extended versions of the film. Ben has what seems to me a needless final confrontation, but I must say the last scene of the film is a quite unexpected and effective twist. It reminded me of some of M. Night Shemalyan’s final twists, except that unlike most of his, this one worked.
– John Sunier
