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I

Title: Mirrors

Director: Alexandre AjaWritten by: Alexandre Aja

Actors:

Kiefer Sutherland As Ben Carson

Paula Patton As Amy Carson

Cameron Boyce As Michael Carson

Erica Gluck As Daisy Carson

Amy Smart As Angela Carson

Seen in Arcaplex Spijkenisse, August 2008.

Review by: Devin Faraci

Watching Mirrors you will go through stages. Stage one is slight interest -

the pre-credits sequence is well done, and promises something intriguing.Stage two will be mild disbelief - could the movie actually have gone thisbadly off the rails only ten minutes in? Surely it has to pick up from here.

Stage three is giggling, especially whenever Kiefer Sutherland opens his

mouth and delivers another FURIOUS line of Jack Bauer-esque dialogue.

Stage four is actual guffawing, probably more loudly than you laughed

during Step Brothers. Stage five is realizing that this goddamned movieis almost two hours long and the joke is on you.

I really like Alex Aja and his previous movies, but he has not only made

the worst film of his career in Mirrors, he's made possibly the worst film

of the year. There's nothing aboutMirrors that works outside of a coupleof gore scenes, and it's obvious that Aja can do great gore in his sleep at

this point. And when I say nothing works, I mean everything stinks - the

acting is horrible, the story is ludicrous, the central conceit is beyond ill -defined. Even the production design is bad - large portions of the film take

place inside an abandoned department store that completely burned... yet

the store is filled with mannequins and the walls, which are scorched, are

covered in untouched curtains.



Kiefer Sutherland plays a traumatized ex-cop who takes a job as the night

security guard at that department store, which for plot reasons, has

remained untouched since the fire that killed 20+ people five years

earlier. While wandering the store he discovers that the mirrors inside areevil, and they have ghosts and they show him things that aren't true, and

they can hurt him via reflection, and they can make him think he's being

hurt via reflection and... well, who knows? The movie never sets up any

sort of cohesive rules for what the mirrors can or can't do. In every scene

the mirrors are capable of different things, without any rhyme or reason.

The evil mirrors aren't just in the store - all mirrors can house the evil.

Actually, all reflections can house the evil, leading to one of the greatestlines in movie history, as Kiefer shouts (he's always growling or shouting)

at his estranged wife on the phone 'Be careful of the water! It can create

reflections!' And the mirrors have an agenda, one that they make difficult

to understand, even though later exposition indicates that they wouldknow exactly how to find what they're looking for. Again, no rules here.

It's worth noting that Kiefer Sutherland plays his character as an

extension of Jack Bauer. It's impossible not to laugh every time he shouts

'Dammit!' (he even shouts 'Dammit!' after he gets a dossier of informationhe desperately needs. It's like a Tourettic response or something), or how

he tries to solve every problem with a gun. That bit of lunacy reaches its

pinnacle when he actually kidnaps a nun at gunpoint - I desperately wish I

was making this up, but the plot of this movie calls for Kiefer to engage in

nunnapping.

Kiefer has an aforementioned estranged wife and two kids, and he's

always hanging around trying to protect them by painting over mirrors butleaving every other shiny surface in the house untouched. He also has a

sister, Amy Smart, who shows up long enough to get naked in a bathtub

and die spectacularly - but if you've seen the red band clip, you've already

seen the best part of the entire film.

What Kiefer doesn't have is 'good acting.' His performance is shockingly

bad, and his FURIOUS reactions to everything turn most scenes into laugh

factories. The entire film is kind of a joke, but it's Kiefer who brings it to

the level of being the funniest comedy released this year. Also terrible:everybody else, especially Paula Patton as the wife. Were she any more

wooden she'd be sprouting pine needles, and her character appears tohave more nipples than brains, so there's a big disbelieving laugh when

it's revealed that she's a coroner. She's certainly attractive enough, so I'd

be interested in a prequel where it's revealed how her character 'earned'

her medical degree.

I don't know what Aja was thinking here. I've been on the record as amajor supporter of his, through the reviled ending of H igh Tension and

the controversial nastiness of The H ills Hav e Eyes. He has a nice shot or



two here, but otherwise this is a movie made by someone with no control

and little vision. The film is filled with plot holes that are obviously the

result of last minute rewrites and fucking around in editing; Mirrors feels

like the usually gifted director is bumbling around in the dark, trying tofind something, anything that will work. And nothing does. I'm hoping that

this is just a misstep for Aja, and that his next film, a 3D remake

of Pir anha, returns him to the great trajectory he was previously on.

It's tempting to recommend this as a 'So bad it's good' movie, but at one

hour and fifty minutes, Mirrors is too much of a tedious slog. At 90

minutes this would be the perfect film to catch with a six pack, but at

almost two hours it's punishing. Walking in I didn't realize thatMirrors was a remake of a Korean film, but looking back it makes sense -

the first hour is the sort of boring nonsense that seems to be the hallmark

of Asian ghost stories. At least the movie is free of scary little girls with

stringy black hair... oh, until the very end when the kidnapped nun, SisterMary Shredded By Glass, turns into a possessed little girl who has a kung

fu fight with Kiefer in a flooded utility tunnel. I know, this sounds terrific(especially the scene where nun-turned-possessed-girl licks Kiefer's face,

or when she gets a steam pipe through her chest a la Commando), but

restrain yourself this weekend! Mirrors is likely best experienced athome, where the fast forward button can come in handy, and where you

can pretend it's an especially weird season of 24.

If you disregard my warning, go liquored up. Sneak in enough booze to

maintain that buzz throughout. You're going to be in there a while, and

you'll need all the fortitude you can get. But be careful - that bottle can

create reflections.

II

The locations the movies play in are:

y The Carson house

y The mayflower warehouse (of what remains of it, it was burned

down)

y The morgue

The characters in the movie are dressed in casual clothing, the night-guard wearing his night-guard costume and when he¶s at home his

sweater and jeans.

The locations such as the mayflower warehouse was kind of creepy, the

main reason was the darkness, beside that it was awfully quite in there so

every step the night-guard took had a sort of echo in it.



The music in the movie was nicely placed, if the night -guard was in the

bar you could clearly hear background bar music. When he was in the

mayflower warehouse it was quite until something strange was about to

happen then in changed into this ghost like music.

There is no clear sign of special sound effects, but there is some nice use

of audio in the movie, for instance: at night 3 in the warehouse the night-

guard hears a scream, but because of the echo created in it he had to

search for that source but because of the echo it¶s more like reality

because he has a hard time finding the source of the sound.

The final scene is still on the back of my eye, the night-guard got chasedby the demon like creature, it follows him while the walls around him are

crumbling, he runs for his life, while trying to hold of the demon, he runs

and runs and when he reaches the stair the room collapse and everything

turns dark. About 5 minutes later he you see the night-guard walkingdown the street seeing the collapsed building, he want to talk to the

people but he can¶t understand them, the he notices something strange,all letters are in mirror image. Then he realizes it, he¶s inside the mirrors.

(this last sentence refer to an old folk story I know, the story basically

tells that when someone dies and a mirror is near the soul of the personcan be trapped in the mirrors.

The genre this movie got by IMBd is horror, I don¶t think this genre is

wisely chosen for this movie because: the movie wasn¶t scary enough, the

acting wasn¶t that good either, the special effects were not placed right,

the audio however was good.

III

When Ben Carson loses his job as a police officer for shooting his

colleague he wants to get his life back on track, he start this mission by

looking for a job as a night-guard at the burned down mayflower

warehouse. He gets the job and he discovers why the other night-guard

isn¶t reporting for duty, he got murdered by his own mirror image. In a

flood of morbid and paranormal activities he discovers why the mirrors

kill, they want Eseker the former host of the demon sealed within the

mirrors. He finds Eseker, but just when he saves his family from dying hedies himself. The sequel Mirrors 2 doesn¶t involve anything with this

movie.

The most important person of this movie is Ben Carson, he¶s the night-

guard who shot his own colleague. He got a bad temper and his family

and friends don¶t believe him when he tells them what he sees in the

mirrors, they all say he suffers from a trauma from the shooting accident.



The second important person is Amy Carson, She is Ben¶s wife, they got a

divorce when Ben suffered from his trauma. Amy raised their kids ± Daisy

and Michael- after that by herself.

The third important person is Angela Carson, Ben¶s sister. Ben lives with

her since the shooting accident. She also doesn¶t believe Ben. When Ben

tries to back out of the search for Eseker she got brutally murdered by her

own mirror image, for this murder Ben was accounted for it. This is the

sign for Ben that he can¶t back out of it anymore.

The children of Ben don¶t play a really big part in the movie except

Michael. Because the children at school bully him he¶s a loner and doesn¶thave many friends. The demon in the mirrors makes advantage of this

and pretends to be his friends, but when time is there he almost murders

him.

IV

The main purpose of the movie was to make you afraid of mirrors, I¶m not

that ugly so I¶m not afraid of mirrors. The thing is that the movie wasn¶t

that scary at all. Everything apart was great but when it was all mixedtogether I still missed something.

V

My opinion about ³Mirrors´

When I went to the movie theatre I was like: let¶s hope they don¶t ask for

id¶s. They didn¶t luckily. The feeling I got when the movie I started was:was it wise to drink so much soda? During the movie I my interest in it

dropped lower and lower, and I noticed the same with the other people

that also where in the movie theatre. If I had to rate this movie I would

give it a 5.7, the reason for a low grade like this:

y Over acting

y Not a good plot

y Although the sounds where nice it still wasn¶t enough to make your

heart hit 180.

y The story could have been better.Even though the movie wasn¶t that good it was still nice to go out with

some friends from the waterpolo.

Made by: Gideon Blok

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