HORROR; 1hr 51min
STARRING: Kiefer Sutherland, Amy Smart
Through the glass darkly: Smart and Sutherland
Life is no bowl of cherries for suspended New York detective Ben Carson (Sutherland, barely keeping his terse wits about him), separated from his wife (Paula Patton) and two young children, camping at his sister’s (Smart) apartment and battling a drinking problem. Can things get worse? Of course they can when Ben takes a make-do job as a night watchman at a burned-out department store. It’s a downhill hurtle from night one as Ben encounters mirrored visions with a life of their own. He should have scarpered pronto but with pretzel horror-show logic, he chooses to hang in there as the murderous visions start to spread.
Remaking Kim Sung-ho’s 2003 South Korean original Into the Mirror, director Alexandre Aja doesn’t spare the thunderously orchestrated dramatics that are the personal property of the horror universe. You could say Mirrors is about the pervasive reach of evil. Or maybe it’s just a dodgy excuse for showier and shower special effects as the narrative spins out from the spooky to the freaky.
