Mirrors: F

You know what aren’t scary? Mirrors.

In this cookie-cutter ghost movie, an NYPD cop has to outwit/battle a ghost who hides in mirrors. Glaciers melt faster than this plot moves and there are few consistencies in the “rules” by which the mirror monster must behave. The ghost can possess your reflection and then whatever evil shit it does to the body of your reflection-self, the damage is “mirrored” on your real-self.

Stupid idea, but whatever; I’ve watched and loved some horror movies with idiotic premises. So I pop the movie in and think “Fuck yeah, let’s see some mirror ghosts murder some people.” The deflated “wah-wah-wah” of a sad trumpet noise couldn’t play loud enough once I was knee deep in this mess of a film. The movie spends so much fucking time on exposition for a ridiculously unoriginal story that there is like a combined three minutes of actual mirror-carnage. You have to follow a detective as he slowly learns about a hospital which was built on top of another hospital which did some shady stuff to patients. Then you have to visit the childhood home of a patient and then a convent and then let’s look through some secret files and then blah-blah-blah a bunch of other boring, incredibly slow investigative head-scratching stuff made up of all the cryptic/generic dialogue you hear in a ghost movie where a character is “digging” for an explanation.

Finally: mirror demons. Oh man, when they figure out there is a mirror demon, it’s like Adam West as Batman solving one of the Riddler’s riddles. How they move from the clues related to the hospital conspiracy to comprehending the EXACT origin/parameters of the mirror demon is the real mystery. When the detective runs around destroying all the reflective surfaces in his house, much to the dismay of his skeptical family, you might have a heart attack because, suddenly, people are actually moving quickly and speaking without drab monotone, unlike what you’ve been watching for what seems like hours.

Also, the demon is really picky/choosey about flexing its power. Sometimes it just creepily scratches someone. Other times, it brutally murders them. The Amy Smart death scene is the best part of the movie. The demon possesses her reflection and opens her mouth so wide that it rips the top of her head off like a Pezz dispenser. The end of the movie is one of those abrupt Shyamalanian “twists” that some people love so much.