Into the Mirror

South Korean horror/thriller that was the basis for Kiefer Sutherland's 2008 movie Mirrors. I can see how they split the plot and spread it over Mirrors and its sequel, Mirrors 2. This version is slower than the remake, and has very little blood and gore. What it does have is a heightened eeriness throughout. We get reflections out of sync with their physical counterparts, shadowy figures half-glimpsed in backgrounds, and a sense of things being just slightly 'off'. Whilst the US Mirrors is unashamedly a horror film, this is more of a crime thriller/police procedural, with some supernatural elements. The camerawork is great (not least for how they manage to keep the crew from being caught in the reflections!). It's well directed and the cast are good. And it has a nice score. Although (unusually for me) I actually prefer the US remake, this is definitely worth a watch. 7/10.

Parts of this horror movie are absolutely brilliant. The opening scene, with the doomed girl standing in front of a mirror, is a real stunner! And for the first half hour things move along quite effectively. We get some amazing visuals, mostly concerning mirrors, and good suspense too. Then, after that half hour mark, we get some truly boring dialog scenes and a lot of quarreling between our hero (who, according to me, seems to be a nice guy but a complete bore!) and an ex-colleague of his (he used to be a police but resigned after a shooting accident). Things pick up later in the movie, but the ending is a little bit of a let-down, because the build-up had so far been (mostly) very effective. But it is a nice idea for a horror story and well directed! Give it a try and I think you'll like it! :-)

INTO THE MIRROR is an intriguing mix of police procedural and supernatural horror, an unwieldy but effective combination that proved successful enough for Hollywood to attempt a remake (the Kiefer Sutherland-starrer MIRRORS, which upped the gore but lost something in translation in the process). The film's setting is a once-deserted shopping mall, always a choice location for the movies and one that doesn't disappoint here; in places it drips with an eerie, provocative atmosphere.

What I liked most about this movie was the mixing of genres. On one hand there's a serial killer aspect to the murders, which are inventive without being gruesome. Then there's the supernatural touch, which is handled subtly and effectively, particularly in that great twist ending. Finally, there's the police procedural side which dominates most of the running time, and that's interesting too because the cops are humanised.

Ji-tae Yu's former detective Woo, now working as chief of security at the mall, is by far the most interesting of the characters. Although he's saddled with one of those all-too-familiar back stories involving him making a fatal error, the script works well to make him sympathetic and an intriguingly balanced lead. Myung-min Kim's officious detective is well placed as Woo's antagonist and the story that develops is never less than enthralling. A good little movie, this one.

The main plot of Into the Mirror concerns some spooky deaths (concerning mirrors) that delay the re-opening of a large department store. The supernatural elements, of ghost-characters that seem to exist the other side of the mirror (and can sometimes reach through to the real world) are played well, but the plot holes in the real and surreal story lines become wearying and detract from the ingenious psychological twists. It has a deft storyline, and all the promise of a modern supernatural-psychological horror, but the hallmarks of inadequately developed Asian cinema and frailty in details. Will probably get re-made at some point with a Western-friendly makeover - and without the subtitles many viewers would probably be more forgiving of such better-than-mediocre but hardly outstanding horror stories.

This film was based on a psychological analysis for mirror and patients who suffered severe shocks. The movie doesn't really have a ghost or a bloody scene, however, the flimmaker intentionally puts mirror into the film many times, the fear and thrill flows underneath the screen.

The film starts with a department store in South Korea, the department store caught fire and one woman was killed. Few years later the department store was opened again and those people who hold secrets of the department store and the dead woman began to be killed.

To tell the truth, the film was great and I recommend you all to see this!!