Dark Mirror

The housewife and aspirant photographer Deborah Martin (Lisa Vidal) fells a strange sort of attraction by a house and convinces her husband Jim (David Chisum) to buy it. They move from Seattle with their son Ian (Joshua Pelegrin) and Deborah takes a photo of a mirror in the bathroom. Along the days, she discovers that her neighbor is snooping her family and a stranger is stalking her. She researches and finds that the house belonged to a painter that might have killed his wife. Sooner she realizes that an alternate world is affecting her life and the glasses of the house are protecting her family.

The above summary sounds crazy, incoherent or inconsistent? So congratulations to me since I have succeeded in describing the complete mess that this story is. "Dark Mirror" is an awful horror movie despite a couple of good reviews in IMDb (but at least two visibly fake from Users with only one review and giving a ten to this crap). My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Reflexo do Mal" ("Reflex of the Evil")

After moving into a new house, a woman and her family are confronted with a series of bizarre and increasingly more frightening visions that she finds is connected to a long-forgotten mystery involving the previous residents of the house.

This was quite a decent if troubling effort. One of its' better tactics is the use of photographs for the mirror which amounts to some of the better scenes in here. Among the better ones is the first attempt as the flashing light distorts the husbands face into a demonic figure while a second figure is seen in the mirror, the same distortion attempts plague the second photographs while the final attempt manages to feature plenty of utterly creepy images on everyone in the photographs before throwing a rather impressive freak-out that comes out of nowhere for a pretty exciting scene. Other big scenes are based highly on the tactic of throwing frightening visuals around at the most unexpected times which includes scenes as the sequence with the old woman across the hall which gets quite frantic with the house search with all the blood found throughout while also focusing on those reality distortion that have been utilized throughout here as well as numerous scenes of rattling windows and shimmering light which is the best part going for the film. The other big positive here is the rather enjoyable back-story which is pretty creepy in its own right before getting to the gradual investigation with the notebook and the water-style filtering on the scene for a truly enjoyable set-piece for the scenes which is enough to help this one out against its damaging flaws. The film's biggest factor against it is the rather toned-down feeling that flows throughout here. The bore and brutality from the kills are so down-played from what their initially could've been considering the actions within which is all based on the toned-down feeling exhibited by the rest of the film. The main part of the storyline here furthers that toned down feeling as it feels more in line with typical Lifetime Channel fare by introducing such topics as her actively questioning whether or not she's insane by imaging everything around her or actually happening which is a common staple in such films. Likewise, this includes the themes of the middle section where she begins investigating the source of the flashing victims throughout, which goes along with the other flaws on display to hold this one down.

Rated R: Violence and Language.

Another reviewer praises this movie as being 'Polanski scary' but I'm not seeing the connection between a convicted paedophile and this leaden paced dud.

The plot seems interesting enough to start with, a sour faced woman and her family move into a house which has some funny business going on with the mirrors. This goes absolutely nowhere though and the twists are only surprising in the sense that there's no lead up to them so when they're dropped into the story it has minimal impact. The film has a go at a few different ideas but doesn't really get stuck into a good ghost story, nor is it really a satisfying thriller.

The best I can say is that it at least shows you the ending at the start saving you from having to watch the whole thing. I stuck on until the end hoping for something to make it all worthwhile but there really is nothing. I like slow spooky movies but this is just slow and badly put together with mediocre acting from all involved especially "grandma exposition" who pops up a few times to try to get the plot moving.

This was a film that I'm not entirely sure how I got turned on to. It has been on my Netflix for years and it finally came up to be sent to me in the mail. It is an IFC film, so I was intrigued by that. I do like to come into films blind, so there's that. The synopsis is a photographer moves her family in a strange old house, where she discovers an alternate reality reflected in the glass...a dark reality that is closing in on her.

We start this off with Deborah Martin (Lisa Vidal) waking up in bed next to son Ian (Joshua Pelegrin). There is blood on the boy as well on herself and we see that she has a knife sticking out of her side. It then shifts back into the past to show us what got us here.

The film informs us this all starts 3 months prior. Deborah and her husband Jim (David Chisum) are trying to find a house to buy. Deborah is being very picky. They arrive at the next one and through some comments; we learn that she is a photographer who hasn't found her groove to get back working since Ian was born. She has been a stay at home mom this whole time and she doesn't seem to be all that happy about it. Inside the house, Ian starts to tear away paper from a window and he's scolded for it. This draws Deborah's attention and she tears the rest of it away to pretty intricate windows that are refracting the light in a beautiful way. She wants this house even though it is a bit overpriced for the size.

They move in and start their new lives. The realtor told them that a painter used to live there. There seems to be more to the story than she knows and Deborah looks into it. Strange things happen though when she takes a picture in the mirror of one bathroom. There's a mirror in front and behind her which causes the flash to reflect back and forth. It does something odd though. It takes a picture of a different bathroom as if reflected from that mirror. It takes a dark turn when anyone Deborah takes a picture of goes missing. Her mother, Grace (Lupe Ontiveros), comes to help her. Deborah gets a bit stir crazy as she tries to figure out if there's something supernatural in her house. She also becomes suspicious of her husband's work schedule and of the young actress Tammy (Christine Lakin) next door.

Now I wanted to go a little bit vaguer here with my recap as there's not actually a lot to the story. I think now after watching it, one of the things that sucked me in to give it a chance is the idea of mirrors and possible other worlds behind them. That is a terrifying concept to me, as seeing someone behind me or my reflection move independently is scary. The film actually introduces there's a door that only appears in the mirror. This is something I thought was interesting, but it doesn't go anywhere unfortunately. I did want that to be explored more.

We also get an interesting idea here that the windows of the house can hold in spirits. They are three dimensional and I liked the introduction of this lore here. It is thought that it can either hold in or keep out spirits as they would get trapped. I really like to see mythology like this, especially since it is something I've never heard about before.

The major aspect of the story is whether or not there's an evil spirit here or is Deborah losing her mind. I like this when it is done correctly, but it is something that used quite a bit. I like that she is a housewife that has been home for an extended time and she is struggling with it. It is believable and could cause her to descend into madness. We are also introduced that there's an aspect that the painter had things happen after they were painted. This is transferred to Deborah's camera, or is it? I won't spoil what happens here, but I did like what they decided to do.

From here I should move to the pacing of the film, which I have to say falls a bit flat. I think that the movie is boring unfortunately. There is some back-story and mythology to play with, but the film kind of just meanders. It decides to go the route where Deborah blacks out and doesn't remember long stretches. We are given flashes of what happened, but I think that is a misstep of where they should have actually gone with this. I do like what is revealed at the end, it is a bit ambiguous, but they didn't completely go the way where it fall into that tired troupe I was talking about earlier.

To go next to the acting, I think for the most part falls flat as well. Vidal I did think was good. She is quite attractive for an older lady and I like the mood swings that she has. It really feels like someone descending into madness where one minute she seems to be getting on track and then next she's slipping again when something happens. A lot of this is done with facial expressions which I like as well. Chisum was just kind of there. It seems like an uninspired performance. Pelegrin wasn't great, but as a child I'll let him slide. Lakin was good looking as well, but it's a shallow character without any development. The rest of the cast is fine, but no one really stands out.

I'll cover next the effects of the film. There are a few practical ones like the blood and some of the wounds. I would say these are fine. They looked pretty real, but the problem is they decided to go more CGI. These computer effects weren't good unfortunately. We get bad green screen sky to show the weather, there are some flashes of light that don't look real and people getting sucked into things that didn't work either. The film is shot well, but they should have gone more practical with the effects as the CGI looks cheap.

Now with that said, this film has an interesting concept with the back-story and the mythology introduced, but it really didn't go where I wanted it to. I know some of this probably comes from the lack of budget to make the effects look good, but that becomes an issue with the story then if you can't execute. It is boring I think because of what they focus on as well. The acting just seems uninspired aside from Vidal. The practical effects are good, but they went heavy with the CGI and it doesn't hold up. The soundtrack didn't really stand out to me or hurt it as well. I would say this film is sub-par, but I'll some credit to the positive things I said above. I wouldn't really recommend this though as it doesn't really do anything that makes it needed to be seen.

Dark Mirror isn't a particularly scary film, but it does have some note-worthy features. There are some good light effects, simple but done well. There are other effects done well too. Also, the transformation of a decidedly unspooky semi-modern bungalow in an ordinary suburb into something spooky is done well with a good soundscape, some above average cinematography and great use of light and dark. This is a great movie for dark things just glimpsed hanging about around corners or fleetingly seen through a prism. And it gets moving really early on, so there is no half hour of establishing normality with only vague hints at danger. However, there are problems as well. At high emotional points some of the performances are over-the-top and thus a little unconvincing, as if the actors couldn't quite handle the reality shifts, or perhaps the writers and Director were unclear how normal people would genuinely react. It's true that most of the twists and turns are not particularly original, but then what are in most horror films? And the mix is original enough that you are unlikely to see what's coming. Dark Mirror is serviceable horror, but more could have been done with the trapped spirit theme. The woman trapped in suburbia theme was one that interested me, and was done quite well. It has both charms and limitations.