Monday, January 26, 2009

MOVIE REVIEW: Mirrors

I finally got around to seeing Mirrors on the weekend. I was pretty disappointed.

Mirrors, directed by Alexandre Aja (High Tension, The Hills Have Eyes remake) is about an ex-cop (Kiefer Sutherland) who gets a job as a night watchman at a department store that was recently gutted by a fire. The store used to be a psychiatric hospital until a massacre, killing everyone, forced it to close. When he sees something in the mirrors he thinks he's going crazy...until he receives a package from the last security guard with clippings about the fire. Now he has to find a way to stop what's behind the mirrors before it kills his family.

I wouldn't call it a horror movie. There were only a few gory scenes and I had already seen them from previews. It was more like a thriller with a supernatural plot. Or one long episode of 24.

I'm sick of previews showing all the best gore scenes. Sure, it makes you want to see the movie, but when that's all the film has to offer it ruins it.

The lack of gore was surprising considering Aja's previous films have been filled with it. And I'm not exaggerating, there are actually only two gory scenes in the entire film. And Kiefer Sutherland apparently only has one role he can play, and that's Jack Bauer. In one scene he shoots at the mirrors and when that doesn't work he proceeds to punch them.

But Mirrors was still fact-paced and worked well as a thriller. The beginning which focused on the department store was creepy, but then when his family was brought into the story it became one of those my-family-is-in-danger-I-must-save-them thrillers.

Mirrors worked okay as a thriller, but it could've been a great horror film provided it had more gore and focused on the creepy department store instead of Kiefer's and his family's problems. And if it was minus one Jack Bauer.

Rating: 3/5

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