MIRRORS - Blu-ray review

I want to begin my review of "Mirrors" with a plea for the remakes of Asian horror films to come to an end. I'm not sure where this trend began, but "The Ring" was the first big success after the inferior remake of "Ringu" found eager theater goers domestically. One would think the horrendous outing of "Godzilla" would have taught Hollywood a less, but it did not. And unless your name is Rob Zombie, the idea of remaking horror films as a whole seems to be a generally bad idea. "Mirrors" director Alexandre Aja should have learned this lesson when the French director found plenty of negative reviews with his version of "The Hills Have Eyes." That film was one of the finer remakes, but it was greatly lacking. Now, Aja returns to directing and remakes after the Aja produced "P2" tanked horribly at the box office.

"Mirrors" is inspired and closely mirrors (pun intended) the storyline of the 2004 Korean film "Into the Mirror." In fact, the film was produced under the working title "Into the Mirror." In the picture, Ben Carson (Keifer Sutherland) is a suspended police detective who takes a job as a night watchman for a massive old department store that was destroyed by a fire. The building sits in its sad and horrific state while insurance companies ponder its fate and it must be guarded. Everything is burnt and destroyed except for the perfectly polished mirrors. Ben needs to work during his suspension and is a recovering alcoholic. He is separated from his wife Amy (Paula Patton) and two children Michael (Cameron Boyce) and Daisy (Erica Gluck). He spends some time at his sister Angie's (Amy Smart) apartment.

Slowly Ben begins to discover unusual happenings in the decrepit old building and starts to see things in the mirrors. He takes strong medication to assist in getting past his alcoholism, but while others blame the drugs on what Ben believes he sees, he knows there is something supernatural going on behind the silver and glass. He starts to see victims of the fire and witnesses himself burning in his own reflection. He mysteriously cuts his hand when one mirror shatters, but appears to repair itself. It isn't long after that Ben realizes that the forces within the mirrors are not confined to the old department store and may use any reflective surface to move and interact with the real world. The mirrors claim the life of the man Ben replaced and soon threaten his family. The motive of the mirrors is clear; they are trying to force Ben in finding somebody or something known as Esseker.

At this point I don't want to spoil any of the surprises or reveal the plot development of the story. That would greatly ruin any enjoyment of this story. Essentially, the story finds Ben in desperation as he tries to uncover the truth behind the word Esseker and protect his family from potential harm from the evil behind the reflections. There is one grisly murder that greatly saddened me and ruined what was becoming my favorite scene in the film. Some of the occurrences in "Mirrors" are rather cliché and can be figured out before they unfold, but the story does try to introduce one or two twists to try and keep things interesting. An ending is tacked onto the end that attempts to be ingenious and shocking, but ends up playing out like something M. Night Shyamalan would create on a bad day.

My opinion of "Mirrors" is that it is deeply flawed and underutilizes its two greatest assets, Keifer Sutherland and the wonderful abandoned department store setting. The son of veteran actor Donald Sutherland is a talented actor that has found great success in recent years as the star of the television series "24" and his performance does bring strong emotion to "Mirrors" and a scene where he first notices something in a mirror at his sister's apartment is an emotionally charged scene that is a slight better than anything you'll find in most horror films. Unfortunately, Sutherland's acting chops are lost after the film decides to become a non-stop exercise in showing the actor frantically painting mirrors. He is not allowed to show any real sense of fear and "Mirrors" quickly devolves into another typical horror film.

The second letdown is how little the uber-creepy department store is used after a scene showing Sutherland dragging a mirror to uncover the reflection of a woman burning in a dressing room. This scene was very nicely done and the sheer size and possibilities that could have created great terror were lost. The set was dark and you never knew what was lurking in any given area of the department store. Anybody that has ever played the Sega video game "Condemned: Criminal Origins" knows just how creepy and frightening such a location can be. I truly felt the film lost any momentum and became sillier than it was scary when brightly lit bathrooms and a cheery family home became the backdrop for terror. Had the filmmakers found a clever way to bring the family into the department store and then have Sutherland scour the incredibly large building to save them could have been masterful.

The film itself is entertaining enough that I didn't have too much trouble getting all the way through it. The final twenty minutes of the film began to drag as I had a pretty darn good idea of how the final showdown would occur and although I didn't full expect the manifestation that did occur, the general situation was anticipated. I grew tired of the family running through the horror home of reflections and just wanted to see more of the department store. The fact that Sutherland's character was mostly ‘safe' from the mirrors greatly truncated the amount of suspense that could have existed in this film. It is predictable and it fumbled some of the elements that could have made the film a cut above the rest, but it wasn't a complete loss. There were a few redeeming moments and I loved the reflections of the dead in the mirrors in the department store. It is just a shame there wasn't more of using that plot device.

Video:

"Mirrors" arrives onto Blu-ray with a pedestrian 2.40:1 aspect ratio transfer that has its moments, but is generally grainy and poorly detailed. Coloring is far from impressive and much of the picture has an appeal reminiscent of horror films from a decade ago. A lot of this is by design and while the grain does provide a film-like look to "Mirrors," the clarity of the film suffers in high definition. The grainy picture affects black levels as well and darker scenes lose some level of detail. I found some of these moments to be bothersome and having watched a few hundred films in high definition, I found this 2008 picture to be one of the worst new films I've yet to see on either Blu-ray or HD-DVD. Again, these were decisions in the filmmaking process and style hurts how well this picture translates at 1080p. Overall, the transfer is technically sound, but it doesn't make this film any more pleasing to the eyes.

Audio:

The English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack is an improvement over the picture quality. The film contains some nice ambient effects and the sound of shattering mirrors is quite impressive as the high frequencies come out quite sharp. Deep bass is equally impressive and the LFE channel rumbles nicely a few times. The musical score by Javier Navarrete didn't impress me with the quality of the music, but it sounded good and was carried through all channels. Sound moved rather nicely across the channels and provided for some good directional effects. The old department store, the Mayflower, sounded quite impressive and had a lot of haunting ambience. Dialogue was clean. I won't go as far as saying this is reference material, but it looked a heck of a lot better than it sounded.

Extras:

The Blu-ray release of "Mirrors" is billed as an ‘Unrated' version of the film and as a ‘Digital Copy Special Edition.' The Digital Copy I contained on a second disc, a DVD, and this can be installed for playback on anything that can play either an iTunes or Windows Media Player formatted media file. Downloading the file will require between 500MB and 1.5GB of storage space. I rather enjoy the inclusion of this ability to take the film on the go, although I rarely take advantage of the special feature. My Zune and PSP have limited storage space. The film also contains the Unrated Version of the film and the Theatrical Version. The unrated version contains a new Alternate Ending that I referred to in my review. Otherwise, there was just a little more gore than the theatrical version.

The disc boots up with a preview clip for "Max Payne," "The X-Files: I Want to Believe" and the current Tom Cruise film "Valkyrie." After this initial set of promotional clips, a number of decent special features are included and the disc is also Enhanced for D-Box Motion Control Systems. I haven't really been pointing that out on my review and I'd love to know if anybody out there is using D-Box and what their thoughts are. You can then choose whether or not you want to watch the Unrated or Theatrical version, but may switch using the menus at any time. The ending is contained in the Deleted and Alternate Scenes (15:37). These eight scenes contain optional commentary with Alexandre Aja and do add a little depth to the film. I was surprised at some of the green screens that popped up in some of these rough scenes.

The title contains BonusView material for Profile 1.1 players. This is the Mirror Images (45:12) functionality that contains a Commentary by Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur. The behind-the-scenes footage that is included in these PiP windows is worth checking out and for those without Profile 1.1 players, they can be played via a "Play All" menu selection. You can use the red button on the remote to manipulate the PiP and toggle between the small window and full screen. There is also a nice number of Storyboard to Screen Comparisons that are also part of the Profile 1.1 feature set. This can be toggled with the green button. Unfortunately, you may only have one of the two features active at a time, so watching the film two additional times will be required if you want to enjoy them all. Or, you could watch the "Mirror Images" behind-the-scenes stuff separately and then use Profile 1.1 for the storyboard stuff.

Four Featurettes are included. The first featurette is the Anna Esseker Hospital Footage (5:33). This is ‘aged' film footage that was created for the film to show Anna's stay in the mental hospital and is an unusual, but interesting feature. Poor girl. Reflections: The Making of Mirrors (48:40) is your more typical documentary on the making of the film and goes into some nice detail about all aspects of bringing the story to screen. Aja's and others' thick French accents can be rough to listen to for long stretches of time. The Behind the Mirror (18:22) is your more familiar EPK style featurette and not nearly as detailed as the longer one and not as interesting. The Animated Storyboard Sequence (1:09) is of the film's saddest scene, when the lovely blonde has an unfortunate bath. It is disturbing.

Closing:

Alexandre Aja is back into making remakes and while I didn't think "Mirrors" was an overly impressive film, it had potential. I have my own vision of how I think this film should work and it would have been an awesome experience, but Hollywood doesn't pay me to be a filmmaker. So it is only my opinion. The film features some nice performances and a few very creep elements, but largely misses the mark. The Blu-ray itself is visually impaired because of the low resolution and grainy cinematography. However, it sounds pretty good and Fox has included some good special features and two versions of the film that make the price a little more appealing. Unfortunately, I'm not sure I could recommend this title as a purchase. And while it is probably worth a rental, many who sit down to watch "Mirrors" will be disappointed.