If you’ve ever looked into the mirror and wondered if it was also looking into you then you’ll enjoy this horror take on that reflective world. It has some grand, creepy moments but a turn at the end moves towards an action finale that felt a bit tacked on.
Ben Carson (Kiefer Sutherland) was once a detective but the shooting of a fellow officer has put him on suspension and on hard times. He’s taken a job as a night watchman at a burnt out department store called the Mayflower. In the 1960s a massive fire gutted the luxury department store and it’s been abandoned ever since.
Carson is separated from his wife Amy (Paula Patton) and is staying at his sister Angela’s (Amy Smart) apartment. Strange things start to happen to Ben as he goes on his patrols in the store. He also receives a package from his security guard predecessor with newspaper clippings of the man who burnt down the department store.
Ben discovers that the former security guard slit his own throat and when he convinces his wife, who works at the morgue, to let him look at the body. The mirror image of the corpse looks at Ben and hisses “Esseker.”
Ben is also seeing the fire victims in the mirrors at the store and other strange things are happening in mirrors all around Ben. He has to figure out the mystery of who exactly Esseker is before he and his wife and two kids are killed by whatever is lurking through the looking glass.
Curiouser and curiouser said Alice. Even before Alice went through the looking glass humanity has had a fascination with mirrors. We might even wonder if when we turn away that our reflections are still there looking at us. It’s Jack Bauer versus the thing in the mirror as Kiefer Sutherland stars in this horror thriller.
I liked what I saw in this reflection, but the finale seemed amped up to satisfy action tastes. The burnt out department store is delightfully creepy. It’s an architecture resembling a haunted house and I’m always a sucker for old, dark house flicks. It’s made even creepier by the fact that the place has been gutted by fire. The insurance companies infighting have kept the structure standing and basically looking the way it did when the fire was put out in the 60s.
There are mannequins everywhere as well as the large amounts of mirrors that have been polished by the former security guard that had the job before Ben. It only gets even creepier as reality and the mirror world start to show horrors that only appear in the glass. Sutherland does well as the man who’s trying to protect his family from these terrors and who only looks more insane to them as he tries to protect them.
In the final act we find out what is causing the mirror images and that’s where the film gets a bit biblical with the nature of schizophrenia. It also sets a grand finale into motion that has Sutherland fighting off the result with his firearm; it seemed a bit much and rushed as well.
Mirrors is presented in anamorphic widescreen (2.40:1) and is enhanced for 16x9 televisions. You get both the theatrical cut (110 minutes) and the uncut version (111 minutes).
I watched the unrated cut not the theatrical one but I’d imagine that the extra minute is in the gore department (and probably the bit in the bathtub). There’s also the 48-minute making of “Reflections,” the 18-minute “Behind the Mirror” examining mirrors and the supernatural, and 15 minutes of deleted scenes and an alternative ending that has an optional commentary by director Alexandre Aja.
I found Mirrors creepy and a fun horror flick. Your mileage may vary. The final act seemed a bit too pat when compared to the rest of the film. I did still like the film by the time the final credits rolled.
Mirrors is now available at Amazon . As of yet, there is not a release date for the UK. Visit the DVD database for more information.
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