Kelly Wandweiver "srorriM"
August 18th 2008 02:47
.setanargemop muimerp s'nottaP aluaP
Give or take a “Prince of Darkness,” finally a movie that taps into our fears of our own reflections*! “Mirrors” is about equal parts dumb and scary but it easily trumps Carpenter’s 1987 ode to tachyons by featuring Amy Smart naked from behind, although you don’t get to enjoy it for long (unless you’re a jawbone fetishist; spoiler alert!). Paula Patton, “Mirrors”’s more buxom, less blond hottie, is also in it but not naked, although her blue-ribbon M & M’s are admirably wet and glisteny for much of the third act. And Kiefer Sutherland’s on hand, acting freaked out and psychotic like on “24.” There’s something for everyone.
“Mirrors” is apparently about a demon “trapped” General Zod-like in the indestructible, regenerative mirrors of a burned-out department store that once served as a mental asylum where they conducted therapy on schizophrenic kids via electroshock and, uh, mirrors. Mmm, the smell of crisp, burning exposition; is it autumn already? Kiefer, a recovering alcoholic ex-cop who shot somebody or something, takes a job as a night watchman at this burned-out husk (why do they even need one? there’s nothing unscorched left to steal) because it apparently pays better than a cop’s pension. Before his first night is over, the mirrors are psychically battering him with spooky-ass imagery, hand injuries, flames, and a demand that he find “Esseker.” Yay, word-mysteries! Since Kiefer’s an ex-alcoholic on dope, nobody believes anything he says, nor do they apparently associate his ravings with verbatim identical mirror-themed ravings about Esseker spewed by previous security guards and employees of the department store, all of whom went insane and supposedly killed themselves using shards of glass, although it was really their demonic reflections doing it. “A shard of glass?” Kiefer asks a coroner friend at one point. “He must have cut it off one of the mirrors before he used it,” she explains.
The mirror-demon doesn’t exactly make the task that it has assigned Kiefer much easier to fulfill by constantly harassing him, arbitrarily killing his sister, and terrorizing his family (without killing them too, for some reason); for his part, Kiefer doesn’t try too hard either, initially limiting his “Esseker” searches to the New York area and leaving his family alone in a house that he assures them is “the safest place” since they’ve painted over all the mirrors in chippable green paint. Hey, Dumb-Ass, how about a house WITHOUT any mirrors? At all? (Oh, and they also seem to have missed a few glass doorknobs, paint-wise.)
As the exposition progresses, Kiefer (who sure seems to be helping this demon out even though the bastard just murdered his sister) discovers that a nun named Sister Esseker is involved, so he brings her at gunpoint back to the department store to die horribly and incomprehensibly, even though she does mention just before exploding that she’s really doing it because he gave her a crumpled photo of his endangered family members. I.e., when he gave it to her a little earlier and she totally shot him down. Back at the house, which is where one would think Kiefer’d go right after getting a terrified call from his wife that the mirrors are attacking (why is the demon attacking them, if Kiefer’s doing just what the demon wants; plus wouldn’t ANY mirror probably work for what he has in “mind” since the demon seems able to emerge from any of them?), sexy wet Paula Patton learns while chasing her apparently possessed or insane son that the demons can come out of reflections in the water too (but not out of the reflections in people’s eyes or light-reflective clothing, I guess). She handles the situation by running around moistly and not getting attacked directly for some reason. A lot.
Luckily the kids live since kids never die in movies anymore (although maybe the son’s still possessed afterward; who knows), and Kiefer dispatches the demonically possessed nun by shooting, impaling, and incinerating her, which sorta suggests this demon was actually way more powerful when it was “imprisoned” in the mirrors and thus has been seeking all this time to be mortal and crippled and shootable. Then there’s a final twist that’s actually kind of cool and endearing and poetic and made me like the whole thing.
Retardation-levels and the repetitiveness of the “reflection-not-turning-when- you-do” gag notwithstanding, “Mirrors” is admittedly creepy most of the way through and does feature some impressive visuals, Amy Smart’s briefly nude backside far from least among them. Enjoy!
*Which hits most of us around puberty.
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