About.com Rating

Hollywood is littered with American remakes of Asian ghost movies that have struggled to recapture the success of The Ring and The Grudge, but none -- except maybe the Jennifer Connelly vehicle Dark Water -- has featured the level of respected talent that Mirrors, a remake of the Korean film Into the Mirror, does. Boasting the combined talents of actor Kiefer Sutherland, whose turn in 24 has made him one of the hottest actors on television, and director Alexandre Aja, whose High Tension and The Hills Have Eyes have been well-received by horror fans, how could Mirrors go wrong?...So very, very wrong.

The Plot

Ben Carson (Kiefer Sutherland) is a down-on-his-luck ex-New York City police detective who accidentally killed a fellow cop a year ago. He subsequently quit his job, developed a drinking habit and separated from his wife -- not necessarily in that order. Desperate to get his life back on track, he takes a job as a night security guard in an abandoned department store that was gutted by a deadly fire five years earlier and remains empty because of an ongoing legal battle with the insurance company.

It seems like an easy enough gig; after all, everything in the store is charred and worthless. That is, except for the mirrors. Somehow, the mirrors in the store remain intact and immaculately clean. The previous night guard, it seems, was obsessed with them before he slit his throat.

Ben too becomes obsessed when he begins seeing visions of death in the mirrors' reflections. That alone would scare most people off, but Ben continues to work at the store -- until he starts seeing the visions at home as well.

When the images prove deadly, he realizes that he's encountered some sort of curse and must solve the mystery behind the store's mirrors in order to save the lives of his wife and kids.

The End Product

I haven't seen Into the Mirror, so any criticism of Mirrors comes from a clean slate untainted by the dreaded horror fanboy cry of "American remakes are never as good as the original!" (Aja is French, for what that's worth.) That said, I can't see how the original can be any worse. From what I've read about Into the Mirror, it seems that Mirrors, in true Hollywood style, has pumped up the horror and gore quotient and has taken some boneheaded liberties with the story.

At least, I hope the story has been altered significantly, because few movies in recent memory make as little sense as this one. The core idea -- mirrors being a window into a spirit world -- is an intriguing one, but it's treated in Mirrors with all thumbs, and maybe a pinky toe or two. Little about the supernatural mystery is ever explained beyond a general "Spooky stuff happened because that's what spooky stuff does." No ground rules for the mirrors are established; sometimes they show events that have happened in the past, sometimes they control your actions, other times they imitate people. Thus, you're never sure what the spectral reflections can and can't do, and when you find out that they can do certain things, you're left scratching your head and wondering, "Why didn't it just do that in the other scene?" I'll tell you why: because the filmmakers are making up the rules as they go along, just to fit the story.

If only that could explain the horrible dialogue. I would say that the stilted, melodramatic lines are a result of English being writer-director Aja's second language, but he did a fine job with The Hills Have Eyes -- granted, no one watched The Hills Have Eyes for its dialogue. This is the type of epically awful writing that gives you retrograde amnesia about the acting talents of the stars. Could I have been duped all this time into believing that Kiefer Sutherland and Paula Patton (who plays Sutherland's wife) are actually good actors? In truth, Meryl Streep, Robert DeNiro and zombie Laurence Olivier couldn't have pulled off this wretched script.

The best that I can say about the script is that it doesn't fall into the typical Asian ghost story mold. There are no long-haired ghost women (something that differs from the original, from what I understand), and the mystery doesn't involve vengeance for a wrongful death. However, when you find out the truth, you might wish it had. What we get is an illogical, surprisingly low-brow tale that attempts to hide its shortcomings in a shower of over-the-top gore and an increasingly absurd climax that plays like The Exorcist as directed by Michael Bay. The unnecessary, tacked-on "twist" ending is the fetid cherry atop this hammy sundae. During the final 20 campy minutes, it almost veers into "so bad its good" territory. Almost.

While it's surprising that Sutherland would take a role in such a flawed film, it's truly shocking that Aja would write and direct it. After strong turns in High Tension and The Hills Have Eyes, Aja seems out of his element here when he tries to generate scares. He relies too much on the admittedly unnerving image of a reflection coming to life, something that loses its edge after, I dunno, A DOZEN instances. Maybe that's why Aja reverts to what he knows best: extreme gore. In the context of a ghost story, though -- as opposed to his previous cannibal and serial killer endeavors -- this feels forced and out of place.

It's a shame, because Mirrors has so much promise. The thought of someone watching you through a mirror is a terrifying one, and the film gleefully plays with the pervasiveness of reflected surfaces. However, a good concept does not a good movie make. Or did we learn nothing from Snakes on a Plane?