Oh dios mio, Alexandre, what have you done?
Alexandre Aja is a talented director who has a splendid visual sensibility that can breathe life in otherwise tired premises. His version of The Hills Have Eyes features one-dimensional characters and a predictable storyline, but Aja elevated it thanks to its garish, glorious appearance. High Tension also looked great, and had a similarly premise, but was doomed by a lunkheaded twist. His second attempt at a remake, a Korean horror film, was destined to be a failure. The vague Asian ghost story has long since run its course, and it can be argued that only the movement's catalyst (The Ring) was successful. Mirrors is a profoundly troubling film, if only because you wonder how such a talented man could pump out such a dud.
The trouble begins right from the start with an uninspired opening. The film proper begins, with an opening credits sequence that is dizzying in the worst way, like the projectionist fed the reels wrong. Kiefer Sutherland stars as Ben Carson, an officer disgraced after killing a colleague. He is living with his sister (Amy Smart), and is estranged from his wife (Paula Patton), mother to his two children. He gets a new job as a night watchman for an old department store that was destroyed in a fire. Around here is when the questions start. The film's first third mines a lot of attempted suspense out of extended scenes where Sutherland is wandering around looking at old burned things, mainly statues, birds and mirrors. None of these are inherently scary, bringing to mind Dark Water, where we supposed to be terrified by bad pipes and a faulty washing machine. If Aja's seem less ludicrous, just wait. All of a sudden, in a manner more awkward than shocking, he starts having fake-looking visions of people burning, so Sutherland screams and hilariously writhes around. AAAHHH FIRE OH MY GOD Not coincidentally, this is the point at which derisive laughter began to emanate from the patrons of my theater.
The plot after that set-up is...honestly, a bit hard to explain. Characters are introduced, utilized in situations that would seem to encourage a fleshing-out, then are never heard from again, and are underused even in their minute facet. Despite the film being based upon another medium, in fact another FILM, Aja and co. seem to have no idea where they're going or what they're doing, to the point that they seem to be making it up as they go along. Every major occurrence in the film was laughably silly and gloriously incoherent. First off, isn't his job description merely to just protect the place from vandals? He's taking crazy pain pills and is still disturbed anyway, so why, after his first unpleasant bit of silliness, would he go wandering around to the waterlogged basement and to the empty reaches of the top floor? Are punk kids really breaking into this place and going to all these crazy obscure places? Can't he just sit out front? He runs home, screaming to his loved ones how mirrors are attacking him, and is somehow surprised when they think he's a nutcase.
From there, the film provides all these bizarre twists about a mysterious woman, and a mental ward and the fire and mirrors and demons and...it's all curiously empty, to the point that I can't honestly conceive how they managed to fill 110 minutes of film. Oh, there's one big gore scene, but the film had lost this crowd long before it, and it ends up smacking more of desperation than anything else. It kept me entertained just because I wanted to see the nonsensical depths it would plumb, and boy did it deliver. By the time he's abducting a nun at gunpoint and wrestling her demonic corpse (in a scene that somehow makes even less sense than everything that occurred before it), all the rules of believability or genuine enjoyment were out the window, and the film ends as incoherently as it began.
In the acting department, it's just as bad. Sutherland is horribly over-the-top (and his character is such an ill-tempered dick that we can't possibly sympathize with him), and everyone around him doesn't know how to act. Amy Smart, the only competent actor in the cast, is dispatched early on, in a scene that later is contradicted, as the film can't even follow it's own rules. Paula Patton was obviously cast for *ahem* other talents, so why they continually give her extended emotional scenes is beyond me. The kids are kids, the rest are forgettable and forgotten (Jason Flemyng is introduced early on as an important character, as the film seems to be setting up a tangent where Kiefer is suspected in his sister's death, but this is as forgotten as everything else in the film).
The film's original conceit is one that is if nothing else intriguing, but its only scene with the potential for genuine suspense (having someone look into a mirror, look away, and have the reflection stay) only works once, and only if you're not expecting it. But this film not only uses it extensively with most of its main characters, announces it in its title and plot, and utilized it in its marketing almost wholly. I could continue in this vein for another twelve paragraphs, but I think the most demonic thing about the film is that its influence has apparently gotten to my brain, because, reading over this, I don't think I've accurately conveyed WHY the film is bad, or at least why it deserves the rating I'm about to give it. In an attempt to inform you, I've also blathered epic-length with little effect. Curse you, Mirrors, your tremendous downside has doomed me to work as incoherent and meandering as you. God help us all.
{Grade: 0.5/10 (what is that, a high F?) / #64 (of 65) of 2008}
Alexandre Aja is a talented director who has a splendid visual sensibility that can breathe life in otherwise tired premises. His version of The Hills Have Eyes features one-dimensional characters and a predictable storyline, but Aja elevated it thanks to its garish, glorious appearance. High Tension also looked great, and had a similarly premise, but was doomed by a lunkheaded twist. His second attempt at a remake, a Korean horror film, was destined to be a failure. The vague Asian ghost story has long since run its course, and it can be argued that only the movement's catalyst (The Ring) was successful. Mirrors is a profoundly troubling film, if only because you wonder how such a talented man could pump out such a dud.
The trouble begins right from the start with an uninspired opening. The film proper begins, with an opening credits sequence that is dizzying in the worst way, like the projectionist fed the reels wrong. Kiefer Sutherland stars as Ben Carson, an officer disgraced after killing a colleague. He is living with his sister (Amy Smart), and is estranged from his wife (Paula Patton), mother to his two children. He gets a new job as a night watchman for an old department store that was destroyed in a fire. Around here is when the questions start. The film's first third mines a lot of attempted suspense out of extended scenes where Sutherland is wandering around looking at old burned things, mainly statues, birds and mirrors. None of these are inherently scary, bringing to mind Dark Water, where we supposed to be terrified by bad pipes and a faulty washing machine. If Aja's seem less ludicrous, just wait. All of a sudden, in a manner more awkward than shocking, he starts having fake-looking visions of people burning, so Sutherland screams and hilariously writhes around. AAAHHH FIRE OH MY GOD Not coincidentally, this is the point at which derisive laughter began to emanate from the patrons of my theater.
The plot after that set-up is...honestly, a bit hard to explain. Characters are introduced, utilized in situations that would seem to encourage a fleshing-out, then are never heard from again, and are underused even in their minute facet. Despite the film being based upon another medium, in fact another FILM, Aja and co. seem to have no idea where they're going or what they're doing, to the point that they seem to be making it up as they go along. Every major occurrence in the film was laughably silly and gloriously incoherent. First off, isn't his job description merely to just protect the place from vandals? He's taking crazy pain pills and is still disturbed anyway, so why, after his first unpleasant bit of silliness, would he go wandering around to the waterlogged basement and to the empty reaches of the top floor? Are punk kids really breaking into this place and going to all these crazy obscure places? Can't he just sit out front? He runs home, screaming to his loved ones how mirrors are attacking him, and is somehow surprised when they think he's a nutcase.
From there, the film provides all these bizarre twists about a mysterious woman, and a mental ward and the fire and mirrors and demons and...it's all curiously empty, to the point that I can't honestly conceive how they managed to fill 110 minutes of film. Oh, there's one big gore scene, but the film had lost this crowd long before it, and it ends up smacking more of desperation than anything else. It kept me entertained just because I wanted to see the nonsensical depths it would plumb, and boy did it deliver. By the time he's abducting a nun at gunpoint and wrestling her demonic corpse (in a scene that somehow makes even less sense than everything that occurred before it), all the rules of believability or genuine enjoyment were out the window, and the film ends as incoherently as it began.
In the acting department, it's just as bad. Sutherland is horribly over-the-top (and his character is such an ill-tempered dick that we can't possibly sympathize with him), and everyone around him doesn't know how to act. Amy Smart, the only competent actor in the cast, is dispatched early on, in a scene that later is contradicted, as the film can't even follow it's own rules. Paula Patton was obviously cast for *ahem* other talents, so why they continually give her extended emotional scenes is beyond me. The kids are kids, the rest are forgettable and forgotten (Jason Flemyng is introduced early on as an important character, as the film seems to be setting up a tangent where Kiefer is suspected in his sister's death, but this is as forgotten as everything else in the film).
The film's original conceit is one that is if nothing else intriguing, but its only scene with the potential for genuine suspense (having someone look into a mirror, look away, and have the reflection stay) only works once, and only if you're not expecting it. But this film not only uses it extensively with most of its main characters, announces it in its title and plot, and utilized it in its marketing almost wholly. I could continue in this vein for another twelve paragraphs, but I think the most demonic thing about the film is that its influence has apparently gotten to my brain, because, reading over this, I don't think I've accurately conveyed WHY the film is bad, or at least why it deserves the rating I'm about to give it. In an attempt to inform you, I've also blathered epic-length with little effect. Curse you, Mirrors, your tremendous downside has doomed me to work as incoherent and meandering as you. God help us all.
{Grade: 0.5/10 (what is that, a high F?) / #64 (of 65) of 2008}