Mirrors: Movie Review

The Western Horror film genre. Its mighty heyday is now but a little glimmer and for us, its been downhill ever since The Sixth Sense came out and more so when the world came to know the Eastern Horror films from Asia, specifically Japan. Hey, Hollywood has even tried to remake those Japanese and Thai horror greats but to no avail, they just lack that subtlety and finesse Eastern Horror film directors have. But who can say, maybe Mirrors might be the exception to that golden rule that Western Horror film just plainly sucks! Well let's just find out don't we.

The film stars Ben Carson (Kiefer Sutherland) who is an ex-police detective and is struggling to make a life out of himself when he shot a police officer dead and became addicted to alcohol. He has lost his job and his family due to this addiction and is currently living with his little sister. Ben trying to make a new beginning for his life gets a new job as a night shift guard on an abandoned mall which burned five years before the current time of the film. Ben, only a few days on his job, finds out that the mirrors inside the burned mall do not only reflect reality but also something beyond him or his world. Ben soon realizes that not only does it reflect "things" but it can also go beyond the mirror itself to hurt anyone it wants to. Now Ben needs to find out why the mirrors are haunted and put an end to it sicne his own and his family's lives are in danger.

The film was your typical Western Horror flick which equally means it sucks big time. First of all, it is not scary at all. It uses the old, tired tricks of trying to surprise the viewer with booming music and sound and sudden appearances of humans or ghosts alike but all of this has been used countless times already for every horror film we have ever seen. Where's the creativity in that? Second, the story was just plain horror film cliche'. You know, said person goes into a creepy place and said person realizes he is not alone and said person investigates the haunting and finds out that the dead/ghost has an unusual background story that ultimately tells why there is a haunting. Just look up every horror story out there and you will probably find the same structure over and over again. The ending too was so-so and nothing really surprising. We have seen this pattern too many times already and its getting old.

As for the things that really separate this film from the others out there? Well let's just start with the good thing. For us, the mirror concept was really great and different. Mirrors are usually associated with not having the capability of showing ghosts or what-not. Great twist right there! Too bad there was little thought given to the whole thing as mentioned before. As for the other different thing for this film, well who wouldn't be surprised but the writers were able to Bauer-ize this one! It's just out-of-place to put action scenes in this film and its sad they put one in this. We just realized that action sequences doesn't really have a place in horror flicks. Mirrors in the end just shattered in its own stereotypical mold. Its just sad that Jack Bauer himself finally couldn't do the impossible; which is save this film (Sorry for the Jack Bauer pun in there but we just couldn't help it!).




Rating: 1 reel




Why you should watch it:
- action sequences that go boom! in a horror film

Why you shouldn't watch it:
- typical story, typical scare tactics! just plain typical!