The Other Side of the Mirror

Regardless of it being low budget and it looking pretty cheap, still saw 'The Other Side of the Mirror' anyway being a fantasy and film fan, loving to death the story of 'Alice in Wonderland' for as long as can be remembered and being intrigued by the concept of turning a popular story on its head, giving it a darker edge.

'The Other Side of the Mirror' does nothing with its potential and is a terrible film in every way in its own right. That 'The Other Side of the Mirror' is a source material abortion is the least of its problems for a film not intended to be a straight up adaptation. It's just depressing to see a story with lots of colour and magic and deliciously eccentric characters stripped of all of that and looking and sounding amateurish in all senses on top of that. Definitely among the worst of my recent film viewings and quite far down on a personal least favourites list.

Its problems are numerous and redeeming qualities are none and it is hard to know where to start with the criticism. 'The Other Side of the Mirror' looks really cheap for starters, with settings and colours that look more dreary and drab than vibrant and inviting. The effects look like they were constructed as an afterthought and like badly out of date video game quality. The photography and editing are haphazard at best, while the direction shows no flair, sense of drama or making the story make sense, it's barely there.

One of its biggest problems is the music score, which has been panned for very good reason. One of the most annoying and tonally and placement inappropriate music scores there is, and one that is balanced so poorly with the dialogue and actor's voices. Being constantly intrusive, really unappealing to the ears and completely at odds with what's happening. It takes me a lot to feel nauseous, get a headache or feel my ears and teeth go on edge listening to a music score, the one here did all of those things and to intolerable effect.

Script and story are also major debits. The script is incredibly childish and lacking in cohesion, when one can actually hear it, and never entertains, intrigues or provokes thought. The story has no sense of wonder or magic and takes an overly serious approach to the story while having cheesy and unintentionally funny moments galore. It's also very sluggishly paced, never comes to life and is rather aimless, almost plot-less in many places.

Characters are completely stripped of anything to make them memorable, no distinct personality traits to set them apart or make one interested or engaged by them. One would be hard pressed to find a blander Alice. The acting all round is awful and barely rehearsed, nobody has enthusiasm or subtlety with many lumbering and others chewing the scenery to pieces that it gets exhausting. The character interaction is random and dull, like the cast were picked off the street and that the filming was where they had seen each for the first time.

Summarising, dreadful in every way imaginable. 1/10 Bethany Cox

I held on for over 20 minutes, giving it chance after painful chance, gritting my teeth and praying for it to redeem itself. Sadly, it didn't. My dogs could do better. There wasn't the slightest preparation or respect for the craft. This seemed more the product of a bunch of stoned teenagers who think they're really deep and enlightened than it did any real filmmakers. The acting was flippant, lazy, and just bad. (If you're gonna play a Catholic and draw attention to that fact, learn how to cross yourself without looking like a claymation character.) I could go on all day, and I barely followed her down the hole. For the love of all things Alice, don't do it.

(Update: It's been a couple of years now, and I came across this title on Tubi. I instantly remembered just how gag-worthy the entire thing was and decided to come leave a review having completely forgotten I'd left one the first time. It's simply that revolting...for me to actually feel the need, years later, to warn the general public about 20 of the worst cinematic moments of my life. As a writer, I've only given a handful of one-star reviews, always looking for some redeeming qualities in the artistic work of others. I almost wonder if they went out of their way to make it as terrible as they possibly could; some crazy Yoko Ono performance art crapfest. Just don't...)

Literally the worst acting I've ever seen in my life. This is an amateur B movie and the acting is awful by even those standards. Anyone involved with making or "acting" in this "film" should find a new line of work. It's current 3.0 rating is waaaaay too high. I've neve3r been more outraged by something for wasting my time in such a way. You can't find any kind of entertainment value in it being so bad like with sharknado because it takes itself too seriously despite sucking so bad. If I ever see anything like this ever again I may lose all hope for humanity for producing something so dreadfully abysmally bad. Anyone involved should be blacklisted from every producing anything that could ever be viewed by anyone for the rest of time.

Why doesn't IMDB have a negative number. Sharknado is at 0 in my books, but this is exponentially worse. Whoever thought that putting this out there to the public, needs a reality check. The scenery, the wardrobe, the hair styles, well pretty much everything is put together like a preschool church play. The is beyond low budget. They didn't even try. A silent film would have been better than the lack of intelligent dialogue. But, then you would still hear that driven to insanity continuing horrid soundtrack. This feels like the work of millenials expecting to get paid for participating or just showing up to work. Their is no love in this, no feeling in this, no sense of pride. You could have tried. I watched this as far as 3/4 and knew my brain was going to suffer from lack of intelligent input, but I kept on with the torture. Watching paint dry as a comparison cheapens the idea of watching paint dry. There's more value in watching worthless late night infomercials on public channels geared at the elderly with too much time on their hands. I don't even think the cheapest and worst designed camera should have been used to capture this mess. This is like a 20 year old design student turning in a drawing of a stick figure man of a three year old using a million dollar design program. I believe more thought went into the first word of my review than the entirety of this trash. A meth head in the final stages of life could have done better. That anyone gave this better than one star is beyond me. And don't say it was good for the fans. This was a travesty to anything remotely related to anything Alice or the fan base.

As a Avid Movie Lover both UK Hollywood & Foreign I'm sad to say this is the Second Worse movie I've ever Seen Try as I could I forced myself up to just over Half way before i had to Quit, Time I will never get back. Scenes where Alice is just walking 3 times too long as if trying to fill time with padding... No it's Boring ..I have watched many low Budget movies that not only were well done with great cast ,with sets that did'nt look cheesy good Scripts and good Editing ,It felt to me as if I was watching a Play by the Luton Amateur Dramatic society ..rather than the same but a West End production I'm sure everyone put a great deal of Work into it ..but it did'nt Work fo ME sorry