The Other Side of the Mirror

With the tag-line " The darker side of the mirror " i had some hopes of this movie. With a really good original story about the break between childhood and growing up, i hoped that this was some kind of dark sequel like what we have with the wizard of Oz. Instead what we get is what i assume is the local cos-player/ civil war re-enactment/ steam-punk group trying their hardest to act without any kind of budget.

As Director,writer,producer and editor 95% of the blame fall on Zach Hamer - the rest goes to whomever decided to have loud license free music play the whole time during the movie!

A small tip to Zach here - when you introduce a character ( bad, good or mysterious ) ,let them do something that makes us care ( bad , good or mysterious ). This was 2 hours of characters we had absolutely no interest in. To see what i mean, watch the Tim Burton Alice movie again and watch what all new characters do within the first two minutes of screen time.

A small tip to anyone thinking about watching this movie: get the game Alice: Madness Returns on steam instead. Better story and characters you care about. ( also much darker mature story, so nothing for the weak of heart. )

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...)

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

This movie, if you could even call it a movie, was the most worst movie i ever seen. Or the worst movie I started to see, because I stopped after 25minutes. I cant even pick out some scenes that where really bad, because they where all so terrible that I don't know where to start. Why even bother to make something so bad? The actors doesn't seems to follow any script, I think they made up what to say as the movie went along. I don't think there where any script at all. If there was, the actors didn't follow it. It must have been embarrassing for the so called actors, when they sat down whit their friends and saw the the finished movie. But this movie is of course a fake movie, trying to cash in some bucks when people thought this was the follow up on Alice in wonderland. As long as they cashed in at least 5000$ I think they break even. But why do "we" all fall for this every time? You hear about a great movie, and then you see a short trailer when you strike a glance at the TV. And when something similar comes out a few months, you think; yes, this is the movie from the trailer I saw... But it isn't! And you figure that out after the first dialogue between two horrible actors in the beginning of the movie. And then you force your self to watch, because you rented the movie and wants to get something back from the money you spent. But after a half hour, you didn't just lose a couple of bucks for the movie rental... you also loose half an hour of your life that you wont get back! And after the fact, you promise your self to not fall for this anymore. You got a smartphone and it takes 15seconds to check if the movie is the real movie, and still I don't do it?

Another similar situation that happened to me and my wife. we bought pizza, candy and rented a movie to cozy evening... The movie for the our evening together was the new "Jack the giant slayer". But of course I rented "Jack the giant killer"... It took us 30minutes to realize that something was really wrong... I should be illegal to release fake movies that trick people in to hire bogus movies instead for the real movie. But after this movie I wont fall for it anymore!

the primary problem is the overly loud, annoying and terrible music soundtrack, which is so loud compared to the actors voices that I gave up watching this after 10 minutes, it was giving me a migraine, the script must have been written by a 7 year old child or a total moronic imbecile. Save your money don't rent or buy this piece of total rubbish wait for the new Disney version of Alice and go see that one instead. I just cannot believe anyone invested to produce this monstrosity it most certainly will not make any money. I usually enjoy watching the copy-cat movies that precede the big studio releases and in a few cases enjoyed some of them much more than the big budget productions, but this one left me thoroughly disappointed.