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Mirrors: Unrated - Special Edition
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (13th April 2009). |
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The Film
 In recent years the horror scene in film, mostly in the United States, has been inundated with remakes and adaptations of foreign material that rarely manages to rise above the original, let alone make something unique or new. The creative voices of the splat pack have managed to circumnavigate the profitability of the Asian remake genre with some more original, or at least super gory, stories of their own. This group of young directors showed off what there is still to tell by building off of older ideas with new visions, especially in 2003 where 3 key splat pack members Eli Roth with “Cabin Fever,” Rob Zombie with “House of 1000 Corpses” and Alexandre Aja’s “Haute Tension” used more traditional horror ideas with new twists and beautifully high levels of gore to propel the visual storytelling. While Zombie and Aja would both explore the remake with mixed results, Aja with “The Hills Have Eyes” (2006) which was very good and Zombie’s “Halloween” (2007) which was not so good. After watching Aja’s writing/directing career with great anticipation for his next work, it was a big letdown to go out and see his latest effort “Mirrors” (2008) which turns out to be a gory remake of a Korean horror film, but depends too much on jumpy scares rather than tension and a poorly executed plot to show off Aja’s talents. The beginning of the film shows some definite promise with an unnamed security guard running from something that’s obviously terrified him, only to be trapped in a corner room of a New York City subway station. After staring into the mirror, his reflection picks up a shard of the mirror and slices open his throat, spraying blood all over the place. Once the plot of the film gets going with ex-NYPD Ben Carson (Kiefer Sutherland) however, things slow back down to a drawl as we learn the back-story of Carson who is now living in his sister’s apartment after separating from his wife and two children as a result of some problems after accidentally shooting a fellow officer while undercover. To help make ends meet and move out of his sister’s place he gets a job as a night security guard at an old department store that was built on top of an old psychiatric clinic that treated schizophrenia. Soon Carson’s own paranoia comes into contact with the mirrors in the department store as his own reflection starts to freak him out and show him some spooky things like people on fire. Most of the problems in the film stem from the fairly dramatic change from Aja’s previous style of building suitable tension in the bizarre and then just having some great looking practical effects work to build off of. Instead, "Mirrors" focuses more on the stereotypical pop out at you scares associated with the asian horror remakes like “The Grudge” (2004). The two scenes that work incredibly well and are more aimed toward’s Aja’s strengths are the opening security guard scene and the Amy Smart chin pull apart that show a great mix of practical effects and effective mood building, rather than just weird reflections and Kiefer Sutherland reactions. Of the good scenes in the film, these two are very good, but unfortunately they can’t make up for the rest of the lackluster film. From Sutherland through the rest of the cast no one really acts their way through the movie, though Smart and the security guard both do a good job reacting to the brutal mirror deaths that they’re enduring. Carson’s children, played by Cameron Boyce and Erica Gluck, aren’t frighteningly bad child actors, but instead feel more like child actors in a horror movie. There’s the typical eerie child moments where the child does weird things or says creepy things that are supposed to be scary or help set the mood, but outside of “The Shining” (1979) it’s nearly impossible to find a child actor that can pull of a horror role very well without just falling back into the typical type. Kiefer’s reactions are mostly the same as he keeps freaking out and nearly turning into a Jack Bauer sort, but after so many years of doing “24” (2001-Present) that it’s almost instinctive. Mirrors is generally just a disappointment in seeing some of Alexandre Aja’s great potential go down the drain. The two major practical effects shots in the film stand out and are really cool to see, but outside of these two moments, the rest of the film could have been directed by a more nameless director with another big named protagonist to draw in an audience. The relatively huge $35 million budget of the film makes me almost see a Sam Raimi effect, meaning that once their budget gets over $15 or $20 million the creativity starts to dry up more rapidly and the passion just isn’t what you saw in the earlier, more modestly budgeted efforts.
Video
The film is presented in a widescreen 2.40:1 aspect ratio with AVC MPEG-4 encoding at 22 mbps and does a good job of trying to bring the atmosphere clearly to the screen. The two good effects shots that I mentioned in the film hold up well and look clean and clear on the disc, while the cheesiness of some of the cg effects done in the mirrors come off as a bit more cartoony thanks to the clarity of the transfer.
Audio
Presented with an English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track mixed at 48kHz/24-bit, audio is also available in French or Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 surround. The DTS-HD track is similarly clear to the audio, all the little shrieks and mirror noises that accompany the film come through cleanly. Much like the visual styling of Aja’s other films; his usually good scoring doesn’t help to draw you deeper into the film, despite having the talented Javier Navarrete on hand to do the soundtrack. Optional English for the hearing impaired, Spanish, Cantonese, mandarin and Korean subtitles are included.
Extras
“Mirrors” is technically a 2-disc 'Special Edition' set, though the first disc is the Blu-ray with all the special features including featurettes, bonusview commentary, storyboard sequence, some deleted scenes and bonus trailers, while the second is simply a digital copy (though it isn’t clear which version the digital copy is). DISC ONE: An 'Unrated' version of the film is included with the 'Theatrical Cut,' but since it only runs 10 seconds longer than the original version there’s nothing particularly new. “Anna Esseker Hospital Footage” runs for 5 minutes and 33 seconds. This first featurette shows the older styled footage of the character Anna Esseker coming to the mental institution including her possession. A thoughtful touch to throw in there and would have been more interesting had the film itself been better. “Reflections: The Making of ‘Mirrors’” runs for 48 minutes and 40 seconds. In this hefty making-of featurette covers the entirety of the production, Aja makes some points about wanting to make a supernatural film and makes some comparisons to the shining, but with the results of his project it makes me sad that he didn’t try to bring his great ability in crafting tension moreso than just reworking from the Asian-horror-remake mold. There’s also a good deal of philosophizing about mirrors, talking with the actors about their characters, and general making-of interviews supplemented with a great deal of behind-the-scenes footage. “Behind the Mirror” runs for 18 minutes 22 seconds and this featurette talks more with academic folklorists, authors and just plain pagans, as well as the cast and crew, about the general philosophy behind mirrors in history and mythology. The featurette almost feels like an attempt to legitimize the idea of the film and I could have been a bit more accepting had the film been better, but the featurette is still fairly interesting in the world history of mirrors and older beliefs. Animated storyboard sequence runs 1 minute and 19 seconds going through theAmy Smart pull apart storyboards with a little bit of animation. It’s interesting to see how the scene was thought up and put together for the film and it’s a nice, brief, look. Next are the deleted and alternate scenes, 8 total, which run together for 15 minutes and 37 seconds and all are available with optional audio commentary by director Alexandre Aja with who I guess to be screenwriter Grégory Levasseur, but he isn’t listed in the selection. The scenes included are: - “Scene 7A: It’s A Job” runs for 3 minutes and 11 seconds, Ben goes to meet with one of his old detective friends while Aja and Levasseur talk about the debate to keep more of that relationship in the film. - “Scene 9B: Snappy Uniforms” runs for 59 seconds, an extension of when Ben is getting a tour of the Mayflower, this scene just shows off the set a bit more and Aja admits it mostly functions to show off more of the set. - “Scene 11: See You in the Morning” runs for 1 minute and 12 seconds, Ben gets ready to start his rounds, Aja talks about the pain of cutting the scene but admits it was unnecessary. - “Scene 25: I Never Come Down Here” runs for 40 seconds, Ben brings Lorenzo down to the basement to show off the flood. - “Scene 54: Michael has a New Friend” runs for 2 minutes, Michael talks about his friend in the mirrors, the duo talks about the family cat and how the scene was important on paper but less so coming into the film. - “Scene 109: You Will Know When” runs for 1 minute and 20 seconds, Ben takes Esseker into the basement to the mirror room, Aja talks about how the scene wound up being un-neccesary. - “Scene 120-124: The Ambulance” runs for 1 minute and 35 seconds, this scene shows what happened to Ben’s body after his soul was trapped in the mirrors, Aja talks about the idea of the demon soul taking Ben’s body. 942 - “Inside the Mirror – Alternate Ending” runs for 4 minutes and 20 seconds. This ending cuts out the trapped in the mirrors twist and instead focuses on Ben pushing his son’s body out of the mirror world and into the real world. Aja and Levasseur talk about how the scene was designed just to show the studio what else would happen and talk again about the idea seeming better on paper than it would have turned out in the film. Finally is the “BonusVIEW” picture-in-picture commentary for profile 1.1 players or greater, this feature acts as both a picture-in-picture behind-the-scenes gallery and commentary track with director Alexandre Aja and screenwriter Grégory Levasseur. The picture-in-picture sections use footage that has been shown a bit in the making-of featurette as well as some storyboarding and other extras that provide an interesting look behind the film though take up a great deal of the frame (the picture-in-picture sequences by themselves without sound are also available individually by pressing the red button during a sequence). There’s also a "storyboard to screen" picture-in-picture comparison mode for profile 1.1 players or greater, it plays with the film that you can watch individually by pressing the green button during a sequence as well. The commentary by AJa and Levasseur is fairly interesting and engaging throughout the film, covering the inspirations and development in the film generally, touching on some of the same comments they both made in the making-of featurette, as well as some good admissions of how some of the CG could have been scaled back in favor of the practical. Bonus trailers on the disc are: - “Max Payne” which runs for 1 minute and 29 seconds. - “X-Files: I Want to Believe” which runs for 1 minute and 26 seconds. - “Valkyrie” runs for 2 minutes and 26 seconds. DISC TWO: This disc is simply a digital copy of the film.
Overall
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