Mirrors (2008)

Directed by Alexandre Aja. Starring Kiefer Sutherland, Paula Patton, Cameron Boyce, Arika Gluck, Amy Smart, Jason Flemyng, Mary Beth Peil, John Shrapnel. [R]

While on suspension from the police force, Kiefer Sutherland gets a job as a night watchman at an empty, fire-damaged department store full of hundreds of mirrors. The mirrors inspire hallucinations, making the victim believe that things occurring in the reflection are actually happening to them…but where does the hallucination end and reality begin? (Hint: the results suggest they’re one and the same.) Borrowing the premise (and apparently little else) from Korean horror film, Into the Mirror, it’s doubtful the original was even half as pathetic as this cockamamie story, which manages to be predictable from end to end while making little sense most of the time. Aside from one gruesome death scene featuring a woman in a bathtub, there’s not a single memorable character, idea or image to be found, and being forgettable is one of the movie’s better traits. Director Alexandre Aja may not have a stellar track record as a genre filmmaker, but even by the man’s sometimes-junky standards, he’s really playing below his grade with this dreck—gators, piranhas, inbred mutants…these are the kinds of threats I can at least halfheartedly get behind, but mirrors? Everyone needed to have been trying a lot harder to make that work. A barely-related 2010 sequel went straight to DVD.

20/100