Mirror Mirror 2: Raven Dance

I liked the old VHS box more than the movie. It has one of those shifting-picture covers; a woman sits in front of a mirror in her underwear, turns and screams at a raven breaking through the glass of the mirror. The mirror does look like the one in the movie; the woman doesn't.

In a prologue, a woman is in a room with nuns, and a mirror covered by a sheet. The mirror distresses her, and she wants it to be destroyed with a knife. One of the nuns scoffs, uncovers it, and loses her sight.

Years later, a young woman dancer and her retarded violinist brother are staying at the same place. A metal/punk band is rehearsing there for some reason, and all get charred during a lightning storm after they bring the mirror out of a closet and uncover it. There are a pair of legs hanging from the ceiling in this room, which can be seen in several scenes in the movie, and I don't know why.

The siblings' parents have died, and they're staying at this nunnery or orphanage where there are no other children. The girl's much older stepsister arrives with her doctor and they try to manipulate her health and mental health in ways that will result in the stepsister obtaining the inheritance (she'd been left out entirely). They hire a janitor (of the nunnery? or elsewhere?) or outsider artist to help them, but he doesn't do much. He's played by William Sanderson, who was in the first movie, but he's playing a different character here.

The dancer falls in love with the mirror, and the brother seems to like it initially, then doesn't. Mostly he whines a lot. A young man named Christian seems to appear and disappear, and he seems to be related to the mirror in some way.

There are some short scenes where some toys are animated that are nicely done, and there's a scene where the dancer's vision is blurred and her bed seems to be undulating that was neat, if brief. I don't know if this was done with a camera or post-production effect, or if they made the bed movie. One of the death scenes copies one of the more memorable scenes from Young Sherlock Holmes (1985).

As others have said, there are dancing scenes in the movie, and there is a raven who keeps showing up to attack people or cause them to have accidents, but there isn't a "raven dance" whatever that might be. Oddly, the title of the movie is Raven Dance. It's the video box cover that is Mirror Mirror 2: "Raven Dance." The end credits say something like "Raven Dance from the tales of Mirror, Mirror."

The ending is really stupid, almost of the "it was all a dream" variety with a slight twist. There's a scene after the last of the credits have rolled of three monks in a room standing by a slanted table covered with candles. One of the monks face cannot be seen at all (the others, only barely), and his right hand seems to be skeletal while his left seems to be fine (one of the characters in the movie does lose a hand...). They seem to be talking backwards. It's only a few seconds long. I have no idea how it connects with the rest of the movie!

I may watch parts three and four sometime, if only to see how they compare.

There where the original "Mirror Mirror" was a surprisingly fun and atypical early 90s slasher/demonic horror movie, the sequel very much is an unsurprisingly weak and typically annoying mid-90s horror sequel. Gone is the light-hearted atmosphere of the original, and all the likable characters and gory set-pieces with it.

What's even more frustrating, but sadly also typical for 90s horror, is that "Raven Dance" nevertheless holds a massive lot of potential, but the untalented director Jimmy Lifton (whoever he is...) does nothing with it. The convent/orphanage setting is terrific, for instance, but there only seem to be two nuns living there and all the orphans are on vacation. What?! The wicked older stepsister plots to mentally break the lead girl, and pump her full of drugs, but she already falls apart herself when she sees the wrinkles in her own face. The film stars none other than B-movie queen Veronica Cartwright as a hysterical blind nun, but the director keeps her locked up in a dark room pretty much the entire time. The "innocent" 9-year-old can supposedly defeat the evil forces, but he's played by such a dreadfully annoying and untalented kid that you wish for him to die in the most excruciatingly painful way imaginable. And - worst of all - whenever the script becomes senseless or heads towards a dead end (and this happens frequently, believe me) Lifton's solution is to insert endlessly long footage of lead actress Tracy Wells dancing in her room.

The impressive, for such a lousy flick at least, star-power is totally wasted. Next to Cartwright, "Raven Dance" also stars a young Mark Ruffalo (I still don't know whether he's supposed to be good or evil) and the always-deranged Roddy McDowall (can somebody explain to me what happened to his character, by the way). William Sanderson also briefly appears, but as a different and totally unrelated character than he depicted in the original "Mirror Mirror"; - that's how consistent this movie is. I only just found out today there also exists a "Mirror Mirror 3", and even a "Mirror Mirror 4", but I think I'll politely pass on those.

RAVEN DANCE is a typical straight-to-video horror sequel of the early 1990s, made without much in the way of a plot and with a heavy emphasis on style which has dated plenty since this film's first release. The inspiration here seems to be the first two in the HELLRAISER series in terms of lighting and set dressing, but the effect is far from the same: this is pedestrian, uninteresting, and entirely forgettable. Once more there's a cursed mirror and a few bloody death and cheesy computer effects, the best bit being when stained glass comes to life, but mostly it's all talk and boring characterisation. Roddy McDowell sleepwalks through a villain role and William Sanderson lends his typically kooky presence to the proceedings, although for modern viewers the most fun comes from seeing Mark Ruffalo acting right at the outset of his career.

Well, I rented this after seeing part 1, which I LOVE. When I saw this I liked it. It is a little slow and starts out cheesy but it gets better. It has a good storyline, some awesome and original kills ("church window" kill=most original kill I HAVE EVER SEEN!) Not too much blood, however, but still some awesome scenes. Special effects, of course, are not the greatest but fairly good. It is good for it's budget. This also dishes out another brilliant ending. The acting is decent. I have seen better acting though I have seen A LOT WORSE. (Can you say AX EM?) So I recommend this if you liked the first, it is an enjoyable film, IMO. 7/10

Very tepid horror movie, if you can even call it that. A tale about a mirror which is supposed to be evil but it does little more than emit weird sounds and drip some blood from time to time. There is scarcely any acting, and the only good thing I can think about the movie is that the dance scenes and the music were pretty cool, although far from good. I have never seen the first movie, Mirror Mirror, but it can't be worse than this one.