Mirrors Review- AKA Jack Bauer versus the Demons from Hell

WOW. Did this one ever look creepy. I was breathless with anticipation(ok, a bit of hyperbole there but I did have some desire to see this unlike The Ruins, which will be rent asunder at another time). I mean it had Keifer Sutherland in it. I will probably be jumped on for this but I think I have probably watched maybe two hours of 24. Its not that I have a seething hatred for the show. It is just that my suspension of disbelief can only be held for maybe 13 hours(thank you LOTR for quantifying that). 7 seasons(or days as the case is) are a bit much for a poor bastard to go through. Damn, do I know how to digress or what.

OK on to Mirrors. This movie even opened creepy. Some poor schmoe running through a subway station in NYC and finally buying the farm due to something in a mirror killing him deader than dead. Next stop Jack Bauer, er Ben Carson. Ben is a failed cop who gets a job at a department store that is being rebuilt after a horrendous fire. It seems that the previous security guards have small issues with going bug fuck bananas and doing horrible things. Ben has a lovely wife Amy, with whom he is separated, and two lovely plot devices, er children Daisy and Michael. More on these three later. He also has an unbelievably hot sister Angela.

Ben starts to see some really creepy turn in your notice type stuff. You know things that would have you leaving your job faster than you can say hostile work environment. I mean, if I was working as a security guard and on more than one occasion I saw someone burning alive in a mirror, I think I would tender my resignation. No, Jack, er Ben carries on. Weird things continue to show through the mirrors and Ben does research. He even uses a microfiche reader which means he is serious. Ben also seems to have brought the creepy to his estranged wife's house much to her disbelief and/or chagrin. You see Amy Carson is what one would call a moron. One could also call her a wretched bitch but I think moron covers it. She seems to work in the Medical Examiners office and there is some definite back story missing as to why Ben is no longer a cop. I believe there was an accidental shooting or death or some such and he went to the bottle. She tried to stay strong but eventually told him to bugger off and he lives with the hot sister.

So... Ben/Jack/David/Doc/Keifer does his homework and it seems that the mirrors are causing this. There is some woman who seems to be at the root of the whole issue and in the interim the mirror mirror universe people want to kill everyone associated with Ben. They start most tragically with his hot sister who in a rather gory death turns herself into a pez dispenser. This causes the psyche of the poor Ben to start to go into a tight spiral of out of control. He shows up at the house where he starts to remove the mirrors and even paint over some of the larger ones. His wife arrives home to see him losing his mind and she shoos him away. You see she thinks he is just crazy and doesn't believe in evil mirror mirror people. Obviously, she never watched Candyman or even Star Trek.

Ben gets visited by his Pez Dispenser Sister and other manner of mirror people. He then gets a name that he tracks down. The name belongs to a woman who seems to have been possessed by blurry cam some years ago until she was put in a monastery and she got better. At this point the mirror people go on the offensive in the house de Carson. Wifey Carson realizes something is amiss when little Michael is having a conversation with himself in the mirror. Mikey gets up but the mirror stays the same in a wonderfully creepy moment. Daisy Carson nearly dies to stupidity when mom is in the mirror but not behind her and as any sane, rational child would do has a questioning moment of "mom why are you in the mirror" despite the fact that the child is bordering on tween and should know better. She inherited this bit of brilliance from the maternal side, as mom goes and does the same to a puddle of water in the corner of the room.

Jack/ Ben/ Athos/ Kiefer now has found the Nun and has taken her at gunpoint to go and solve the case of the evil mirror demons. This involves some pretty sketchy effects and a battle royale that would be fitting for episode 24 of well....24. These 5 minutes of demon bashing by Jack Bauer are easily the weakest of the movie. The movie was awesome up until this point, all of my snark aside. However, and that is a big however, the 5 minutes were enough to drop this movie an easy 2 points on my scale which shall be one to five today.

I will always go on and on about the reveal. I hate it in most movies as it is done so piss poor that I believe that most production houses have a room of sub-imbecile level individuals they keep around to come up with the horror. I point to Jeepers Creepers as my prime example. Great flick, right up to the point where they showed the bad guy. I don't know if I can blame Aja(the writer/director) for this. He did an amazing job with Haute Tension and the Hills Have Eyes remake. The reveal in Haute Tension actually had me go, "Holy crap...that is awesome". So did he and his writing partner(also of Haute) get man handled by Hollywood to rewrite this? Did some Exec say "oh and by the way we need a definite Jack Bauer moment" and they had to succumb so as to get the film green lit? These and more mysteries will be revealed in the next season of 24.


PS My wifey points out why is it that you never see the cast going to the bathroom on 24 as it takes place during a single day. I could only come up with they do that during the commercials. Any other ideas would be welcome.


Rated: 3 out of 5 stars. This is the traditional method of rating. It definitely lost 2 that could have made this the bomb digity of horror movies this year(yeah I know not hard but hey we still have a few remakes to go til 2009)