October 5, 2024 • 34 mins
In this episode of Shelf Criticism, Stephen goes deep into the reflections of Alexandre Aja’s Mirrors (2008). He explores how this film stacks up against Aja’s other work, what the Splat Pack brought to the horror scene, and why Mirrors is an oddball in the bunch. Stephen also shares some interesting trivia (jaw prosthetics, anyone?) and gives his final shelf rating for this eerie tale. Did he mention he watched the unrated version?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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I'm not the one looking into the mirrors, but they're looking back at me.
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There's no one looking back at you through the mirrors.
AHHHHH!
Welcome to Shelf Criticism. Meet your host, Stephen, a scholar of literature and film by day, and by night a cinematic archaeologist with a penchant for everything from art house to popular to outright trash cinema.
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Over the past quarter century, Stephen has amassed an eclectic DVD collection, now occupying five shells of a curio cabinet in his living room.
Each week, he bravely selects one of these titles to dissect. Join him as he unearths everything from obscure gems to cinematic missteps.
From blockbuster hits to forgotten flops, each film gets the critical once over it probably doesn't deserve but will absolutely receive.
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So grab your popcorn and settle in. It's time to dive into the diverse world of Shelf Criticism.
Welcome to the first of a series of special editions of Shelf Criticism.
For me, I start thinking about Halloween a little earlier than most folks. And by that, I mean November 1st.
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Every day is Halloween, at least for me, or as the viral video clip from Ava Ryan put it,
Why do you like Halloween so much?
There's always Halloween in my soul.
I normally don't go wild over fad internet video clips, but you know that one just spoke to me.
I say all that to say, all the month of October I will be rolling out horror flicks. Lord knows my DVD shelf has enough of them.
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My late wife loved them as much as I did. Good ones, bad ones, so bad they're good ones, so bad they're painful ones.
We tore through so many year round, but especially in the month of October.
We spent a lot of time cuddled on the couch, all the lights off, watching the forces of darkness wreak havoc on unwitting characters.
In the next few weeks, you can expect a decent mix from the comedy horror fare of Van Helsing,
one I will never not give an October rewatch to, all the way to the twisted atmospheric world of Rob Zombie's violent aesthetic.
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Today, however, we're taking a look at a film by director Alexandre Aja.
And again, he's French. I am so sorry to the French listeners.
I try my best. I really do, but I'm just a stupid American.
Alexandre Aja, something along those lines.
Of course, he's famous for such thrilling white knuckle suspense films as High Tension and Crawl, and surprisingly also the horror comedy Piranha.
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Hey, dude's given us two Animal Attack films, so you know I have to like him.
This film was released in 2008 right in the middle of that dreadful run of PG-13 horror that gave us Pablum like the grudge,
One Missed Call, The Haunting in Connecticut, and The Apparition.
Lord, that was a miserable time to be a horror aficionado.
But this film was a hard R, even having to dial back a bit of the gore to secure that rating.
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To come about when it did, it surely felt like a welcome pivot to what we were suffering through.
I mean, don't even pretend like you didn't rage-hate the boogeyman.
Even Emily Deschanel couldn't save it.
Today's shelf pick is Mirrors, starring Kiefer Sutherland.
So what I do in this segment is just simply take out my DVD, have a glance at it, describe it to you, read all the fun stuff on it.
Let's get started.
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My copy of this film, for starters, has a yellow sticker in the upper right corner that reads,
Guaranteed Preplayed, $14.99.
There is no way in the world I paid that price for this thing.
It also has the name Ashley scribbled on it, so hi Ashley.
Thanks for hawking this thing so many years ago so I can talk about it today.
The first line of text at the top is simply the billing for the film's top star, Kiefer Sutherland.
Beneath is the title of the film, Mirrors.
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It's done in all caps and that stylistic touch of having the second R in the middle of the word written backwards,
mirrors, get it?
Sutherland stands on a staircase covered in glass shards while in the mirror behind him it looks like four agonizing souls are pressing their faces against a large mirror.
Scratched across the glass just above Sutherland's head, much in the manner that the word Esiker gets etched into the mirror in the film, is the word Unrated.
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Believe me, they really want you to know this DVD contains the Unrated version of the film.
Case in point, the text at the bottom reads, Shocking Unrated Cut, Too Terrifying for Theaters.
To accent this, the words Unrated Cut and Terrifying are in red while the rest of the text is in white.
And it's in all caps too so that must mean it's important to note, right?
Underneath this, also in white, though not in all caps, that's a good thing, is the phrase includes both the theatrical version and unrated version of the film.
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Though oddly enough all the major words are capitalized as if this were a title, who knows?
On the DVD back, again it reads in all blood red caps, Stare into the Face of Terror.
Mercifully only one exclamation point at least.
The synopsis is this, Look deeper into the world of mirrors with this thrill packed DVD featuring an Unrated Cut, plus the original cut of the film.
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Yet again an unnecessary comma between cut and plus.
Seriously, is this something they teach in cover copy composition 101?
Anyway, next paragraph.
Attempting to pick up the pieces of his life, a disgraced former cop, Kiefer Sutherland, takes a routine job guarding the charred ruins of a once famous department store.
But the terrifying images he sees in the store's ornate mirrors will send him on a pulse pounding mission to unravel the secrets of the building's past before they destroy his entire life.
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Beneath there's a picture of Sutherland shining a flashlight at a mirror that has a strangely nondescript, screaming face in it.
It's a scene that's not in the film, I'm pretty sure.
In the upper right corner we get three smaller photos, all in the film.
Ben's reflection staring into the mirror he's fired gunshots into outside of Amy's house.
You can see Amy in the background too.
Michael sitting in the pool of water on the floor staring at his own reflection.
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And then a shot of Angela leaned against a door frame for no other reason than to remind us, a handful of people who love varsity blues are just friends, that hey, Amy Smart's also in this flick.
Oh, and beneath that, we are informed, includes both a theatrical version and the unrated version of the film.
Again, with a strange capitalization.
You know, I can't be completely certain, but I think maybe, just maybe, there's an unrated version of the film on this DVD.
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Beneath this, there's a common declaration that this film is rated R for strong violence, disturbing images, language, and brief nudity.
Beside that, we're informed that, and I quote, the unrated version of this film is not rated.
Was that really necessary?
Talk about something that should be filed away at the Department of Redundancy's department.
Anyway, that sentence continues, and contains additional sequences of strong violence, disturbing images, language, and brief nudity.
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Maybe we should pause here and talk about the unrated version of the film. It's on there, I promise.
As is my custom when given the option to watch the rated or unrated, I always select unrated.
It's not that I crave the more salacious content necessarily.
It's just that typically the unrated is the director's truer vision, not the final cut that's been sliced and diced to satisfy both the Gucci, loafer wearing execs,
who see dollar signs instead of artistic expression, as well as the Pearl Clutching MPAA ratings board,
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whose unwritten standards and rules have held a stranglehold on the film industry for decades, one far more deleterious than the old Hays Code, I might argue.
But I digress. If you want to go down that rabbit hole, check out the documentary, This Film Not Yet Rated.
It's a wonderful expose of how hypocritical and regressive the rating system is.
Back to the issue. The description here that the unrated version, which in case you couldn't figure out is not rated,
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and I quote, contains additional sequences of strong violence, disturbing images, language, and brief nudity.
The way it's worded, it sounds as if it contains a little more of each of the four categories,
the same four categories I might add that are rattled off under the R ratings warning.
I didn't watch the R rated version too and jot down the differences.
I do have a life that, okay, I don't have a life, but I still have no inclination to be that thorough.
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Some putz on the internet will have done that for me.
But it does turn out that this most ballyhooed unrated version, too terrifying for theaters as they tell us, is barely more than a minute longer.
It has a bit more gore, specifically more blood splatter in the opening sequence, and a bit more in the scene where Angela does that thing with her jaw that, yeah, that's a visual that's gonna stay with you.
Still, that's added strong violence and disturbing images, yeah, but the wording makes it seem like we get a little bit of all four.
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I harp on this simply because I wonder, is this an effective strategy?
Would being duped into thinking one was getting several more minutes of guts and blood and scares and F-bombs and maybe TNA2, the wording suggesting all of that,
would that cause a person to snatch this off the shelf and take it home?
Is that why Ashley grabbed this guaranteed pre-played copy from the ridiculous price of $14.99?
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All I know is if you fell for that marketing ploy, you'd be left with about a minute's worth of extra blood splatter and a whole lot of buyer's remorse.
I usually mention if any special features are lauded on the back, and it does have the typical boxes that describe the language offer, the Dolby output for them all, the subtitles, the aspect ratio, and that's it.
Although I do have on the highest authority that an added special feature is the unrated version of this film.
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How I came to own it. I usually spend more time on how I came to own these DVDs, but I got a little carried away with the cover description there.
So to balance it out, I'll keep this part really simple. My wife and I did see this one in the theaters.
She was a really big fan, not just of horror films, but also of Kiefer Sutherland.
Matter of fact, in 2017, Sutherland came to my corner of the world to record at the famed music studio Muscle Shoals Sound.
Not to be confused with the famed music studio fame, of course. And he also played a gig here. Neither she nor I knew even played music, but we still bought tickets and took in the show.
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It was a good night of music. Though I haven't listened to his band since. Honestly, all I really remember is covers of Gordon Lightfoot and Bob Dylan, probably because they were the only two songs I recognized.
Still, we liked the film. Again, I think the word refreshing was bandied about a bit.
How nice to see some actual blood. How nice to be in a theater filled with actual adults and not snot-nosed high schoolers on dates.
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I'm fairly sure the DVD was another of my many pawn shop purchases, probably paying more along the line of a dollar, two dollars, as opposed to poor Ashley, who forked out the exorbitant rate of $14.99 for a used copy.
Did we really used to do that? It seems so expensive.
For that price today, it'd better be brand new Blu-ray and have a digital code too. Not to mention some appealing special features. Maybe an unrated version.
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And it's not like I'm exactly frugal either. I just spent more than $14.99 on a single glass of bourbon last night with my guys at the bar. But a used DVD? Man, Ashley, you got robbed.
So let's move into the critical reception. I liked this film the first time I saw it, and so did my wife. The critics, on the other hand, ouch.
It holds a paltry 16% on Rotten Tomatoes and barely fares better on Metacritic with a score of 35.
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As usual, moviegoers were just a little more charitable. Still not exactly thrilled. It scores 44% on the popcorn meter of Rotten Tomatoes and a slightly better than average 5.9 on Metacritic's user reviews.
The best critical zinger comes from Frank Schek of The Hollywood Reporter.
This remake of a South Korean movie ultimately provides fewer scares than the average aging baby boomer feels every time they look into a reflective surface.
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I concur, though you might as well just toss Gen X or that too, because I'm on board.
That said, I thought we'd have a look at Rob Nelson's review in Variety, which contains the interesting tagline of, and I quote,
Softcore horror at its best, failed allegory at worst, mirrors reflects little beyond Splat Pack auteur Alexandre Aja's desire to push his genre into less punishing and more profitable territory.
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We should probably stop and talk about that term, Splat Pack.
It's coined by the critic Alan Jones in a magazine called Total Film.
He describes a new generation of auteur filmmakers pushing back against the wave of PG-13 horror films or as he styles it, and I quote,
All those toothless remakes of Asian hits starring Jennifer Connelly, Naomi Watts and Sarah Michelle Geller.
Interestingly enough, Mirrors is also a remake of the 2003 South Korea horror film Into the Mirror.
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While it's necessary to note that the films Jones mentions are all of Japanese origin, and there are certainly cultural differences between them,
there is a hint of irony in the statement nonetheless.
Still, Aja is lumped alongside others like Eli Roth, James Wan, Rob Zombie.
In another Variety article titled Blood Brothers, Pamela McClintock says of this ilk,
Roth and a cadre of fellow directors, all closely knit, young and well-educated, are introducing a level of terror, torture and depravity that would make Freddy Krueger run for cover.
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Audiences are lapping it up with the low-budget films routinely beating studios' pricey entrants at the box office.
And indeed, she's right. It's worth noting that the DVD edition of Hostel actually outsold the line The Witch and the Wardrobe at Walmart upon their initial release.
Clearly, audiences were clamoring for this sort of film.
The other characteristic of the Splat Pack was their war with the MPAA, which I've already alluded to.
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Aja's French-language film Halt Tentionel, I'm so sorry French people, American audiences know it as High Tension, received an NC-17 rating specifically for the violence.
I didn't find it that over-the-top personally, much less so than his remake of The Hills Have Eyes, which also had a battle with the ratings.
Quick note on that. My research into this led me to a book called Selling the Splat Pack, the DVD revolution in the horror film by Mark Barnard, an Irish film scholar whom I've mentioned on this podcast before.
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I have ordered that book now because if I ever needed a critical companion, it's this one. It's almost like it was invented in some ways for self-criticism.
But I should note that there's a chapter titled The DVD Revolution in the Horror Film Take Two, The Rise of the Unrated.
Somehow it seems like we're on the same wavelength, though my earlier observations about the marketing of the unrated version of this were formed well before I knew this book even existed.
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Oh, and in case you didn't know, my DVD of Mirrors features an unrated version.
Back to the critic. Nelson continues, Unconvincingly set in New York City, Romania lensed Mirrors' Cas Bucuret's unfinished Academy of Sciences building as a former department store patrolled by Ben Carson, Sutherland, a recovering alcoholic recently suspended from the NYPD.
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And I did find this interesting as well. Remember back when so many films were set in New York City? That did become rather expensive to film there, so a lot of productions moved other places.
Toronto, for example, being a stand-in. Likewise, a lot of other films found other settings, whether they be in the heartland of middle America or a stand-in for another big city.
The film wanted some urban flair. Chicago just talked about the breakup, which is set there.
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Earlier on in the film, I did think to myself, how nice to see a New York City film again.
And then I began to realize the more I watched just how, you know, aside from the stock footage of taxis and bustling streets, this was so not New York City.
Turns out most of it was shot in Bucharest, Romania. Nelson's keen eye catches this nicely.
He continues, Aja, who co-wrote the screenplay with Gregory Levesue, so sorry, French people,
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strains to lend the horror of a psychological dimension as when Ben frantically strips his wife's house of its mirrors.
But the film's only frisson derives from a handful of cheap cattle prod style shocks, mostly revealed in mirror reflections, Natch.
While the dialogue is hamstrung by the likes of Ben's ridiculously rhetorical question, what if the mirrors are reflecting something that's beyond our reality?
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And I would say not only psychological, but also philosophical. And I'm going to talk about that in just a moment, so we'll put a pen in it for now.
But first, allow me to address those cattle prod style shocks, better known as jump scares.
There are so many egregious amounts. They come so often and honestly, they work with a sudden flash of the camera and the loud orchestra beats.
But the word cheap that Nelson uses is fitting. Whether it's a startled pigeon or some strange occurrence in the reflection,
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it's just too much over too little that detracts from the overall story.
I don't recall Aja being overly reliant on jump scares in his other films, so it comes as a bit of a surprise here.
Finally, Nelson says, along with Rob Zombie, The Devil's Rejects, Aja remains the most visually gifted of the Splat Packers,
although Mirror sports little of this disturbingly arty carnage that distinguished both the Hill's remake and the strongest,
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most settling work, the French Halt Tentionel. Again, there's very little I can add here. I certainly don't disagree with his take.
You know, the term auteur gets bandied about often with the Splat Pack directors.
And it's true, each member of this fraternity, currently an all male group to my knowledge, has a very distinct visual style.
When you're watching a Rob Zombie film in particular, it's immediately clear who's behind the camera.
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The same can be said, perhaps to a lesser degree, for Juan, Roth, Aja.
Some of Aja's hallmarks are definitely present here, and though he's occasionally made some exceptions,
Piranha immediately coming to mind, he generally favors muted tones, often cool or sometimes almost desaturated.
His films lean into over the top graphic violence, and he likes to use practical effects over CGI to kind of give it that gritty, realistic edge.
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He also tends to place his characters in tight, claustrophobic settings to heighten the suspense, and we see every bit of that on display in Mirrors.
But then there are aspects where Aja usually excels that are glaringly absent here.
Which brings me to the next segment, my take.
Another hallmark of Aja's is typically his precise breakneck pacing.
Both high tension and crawl come to mind immediately.
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There's a slight lull in the beginning where the viewer gets acquainted with the characters, and we build a little rapport and pathos with them.
And then we're thrown into a steadily escalating level of action, tension, and threats.
While Mirrors certainly has the escalating suspense, the pacing itself just feels off.
For example, it seems Ben far too easily buys into the fact that there is something supernatural going on with the Mirrors.
(17:16):
While everyone else around him, rightfully so, thinks he's off his rocker, we never see the same sense of self-reflection in him, no pun intended.
Or at least only a quick nod and a wink in one instance.
His estranged wife Amy, who's a medical examiner, so someone who has a physician-level knowledge about the human body and mind,
immediately asks him what medication he's on to treat his alcoholism, and though we're never given a particular name of the drug,
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she looks at the bottle and remarks that it's powerful stuff.
It seems that realistically, most people inhabiting the real world would be entertaining the same thoughts.
Not only is the medicine a strong psychotropic, he's been through an enormous amount of trauma.
Either or, the combination of both should be enough for him to at least consider that the hauntings exist only in his mind.
After all, he's working overnight in an abandoned burnt-out shell of a department store full of pigeons and seared mannequins and statues.
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Even the hardiest of souls and the steeliest realistic minds would probably start to psych themselves out a bit.
And this is going to sound like one of those cake-and-eat-it-too things, but at the same time, the film feels long.
More than one reviewer I surveyed used the term plotting.
It doesn't have that same fast pace typical of Aja, and it shows on the runtime, too.
Crawl clocks in at an hour 27 minutes, Piranha an hour 28, and High Tension is an hour 29.
(18:30):
The unrated version, if you're curious, does bring a little bit more than the paltry minute-plus of mirrors, closing the credits at the 95-minute mark.
Mirrors, on the other hand, an hour and 51 minutes, and subtract literally one minute for the R-rated version.
I don't think that point is unrelated to the pacing issue.
The exposition also leans into some of the laziest shortcuts that I abhor as well.
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I know films don't have the luxury of narrative digressions or quick-apositives like novels do, so it's understandable.
Conveying character backstory can be a challenge.
But it's frustrating when movies resort to dialogue no real human being would actually ever say.
Case in point, at one moment, Angela looks at me and says, I'm your sister.
Okay, I too have a sister, and I don't really need her to articulate her relation to me.
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I'm pretty sure I was aware of it when she came yowling into this world.
Likewise, Ben's exasperated declaration to Amy that I killed a man.
I mean, yeah, she knows that.
Though we never get the entire story, we're meant to infer that Ben was a police officer who shot and killed an undercover cop.
The camera zooms in and lingers on a newspaper clipping for an inordinate amount of time during an early scene that tells us all of this.
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So just tell me, do people really keep newspaper clippings of their greatest failures,
ones that drive them to drinking and wrecking their families right there on their desk,
and likewise the declarations like, I haven't had a drink in three months?
I can see how he might actually say that in a conversation between him and his wife, but it still feels shoehorned.
I mean, there might as well just be a big flashing light above their heads going ding, exposition, ding, and that ending.
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What can I even say?
Now, I actually liked, sorta, the final twist.
There's a false dawn where Ben thinks he's gotten away, but nobody's really noticing him as he's walking around,
and then he looks around and every bit of text that he sees is written backwards,
which clues us in that he's been sucked into a mirror dimension, I guess.
And that's fine.
But what gets us there in that third act is what bothers me.
He kidnaps a nun.
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I mean, just let that sink in for a second.
Yes, we understand he's doing it to save his family, and he has no choice.
And also, I mean, having been well-versed in the film tropes that we know so well as an audience,
we understand that nun should already be self-sacrificial enough to merely go along,
to literally face her demons down in order to save Ben's wife and children.
Still, he kidnaps a nun.
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Had he not gotten sucked into that mirror dimension at the end,
he'd be in all sorts of legal trouble.
Can you imagine trying to explain that one to investigators?
Worse, however, is when the demon possesses Anna Essaker again,
turning her into a soulless, cadaverous creature who shrieks and runs across walls
in that jerky motion that every stereotypical demon and ghost over the last three decades of filmmaking has.
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If that isn't bad enough, like, Ben throws down with this thing.
Like, seriously, he's punching it, he's shooting at it, he's shoving it into a broken pipe to impale it.
He ignites a giant explosion to reduce what was once poor sister Anna into ash.
It's honestly so absurd that it creeps into the realm of hilarity instead.
It's a finale so outlandish it feels like a different film altogether.
It's a far cry from the eerie tension Aja usually delivers,
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and it's proof of Mirror's, I guess, ultimate identity crisis.
Finally, and I'm going to be brief here because I'm probably going to run over long anyway,
this is a film that is perched to venture into some pretty deep, thoughtful philosophical realms.
The Splatpacks' oeuvre is often cited as being multi-layered, more than popcorn entertainment or gross-out cinema,
that it comments on society writ large.
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Hostel's been noted, for example, for its commentary on the perception of Americans in Europe
during the time of the globally unpopular Iraq War.
In fact, most of the films coming from this faction are usually seen as commenting on the world post-911
and the vast turbid societal ripples that that moment catalyzed.
Perhaps with a burnt-out haul of a once-great department store,
there's something to be said about rampant consumerism in the world.
(22:09):
The President's advice to Americans after the tragedy of 9-11 comes to mind immediately, right?
All he told us was, go shopping.
More so, however, while having little to do with the historical trends going on at the time of the film's release,
the premise of Mirror's reflection and the light sets this film up to go to a number of different philosophical directions.
From the ancient myth of narcissists to the mythology of Jung,
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the individual human being gazing at themselves in reflection is really a profound concept.
It's something we take for granted when we comb our hair, we brush our teeth, we wash our hands,
but it's in these moments we see ourselves in a different perspective, from a different angle.
We see ourselves the way others see us.
And how often does that reflection staring back at us differ wildly from what we perceive ourselves?
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How often do we face our metaphorical demons as we have a one-person staring contest in front of a slab of reflective glass?
Ben is washed up on leave from his career as a police detective, carrying guilt and trauma from an accident that...
it was an accident, but he was the cause of it.
His alcoholism, his temper flaring, his estrangement from his family, or as Nelson points out,
(23:14):
if Aja, son of a French director, Alexandre Arcadi, I can't, I'm sorry,
marriage mixta, marrage mixta, I don't know, mixed marriage I assume is the name of this film in English,
and film reviewer Marie-Jo Joann intends to offer a self-reflexive critique of cinema in mirrors.
The results are nowhere near the screen.
So much of film studies deals with this issue of us as spectators,
(23:38):
and it's nowhere near as new as the relatively nascent discipline of film studies,
or even the creation of the technology to capture motion pictures for that matter.
As far back as ancient Greece, when Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and the like were staging their tragedies and dramas,
the culture was already aware of the voyeuristic nature of viewing these fictional representations.
(24:00):
I think a fellow named Aristotle wrote a good bit about this actually.
From Laura Mulvey's take on the male gaze and scopophilic objectification
to Danielle Mortorano's recent work on voyeurism in films like Blue Velvet and American Beauty,
the self-aware nature of being a viewer, watching something you shouldn't be watching if it were actually happening,
peering into the characters' private moments and their corners of the world you would never see,
(24:24):
it's a real focus of film studies.
And it also makes its way into meta or semi-meta commentary in film itself.
If ever a film had that softball tossed at it, it's mirrors.
And mirrors stepped up to the plate, took a swing, and whiffed.
Standout performances? It should surprise absolutely no one that Kiefer Sutherland carries the film like the veteran talent that he is.
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I think he plays it pretty solid. He's the next cop, which means he can't be too frightened and jumpy.
But he's also going through an intense mental health crisis, meaning he can't be just catatonic either.
He has his outbursts and moments, and okay, perhaps he does get a bit too Jack Bauer-esque in a few moments.
Kidnapping a nun, am I right? But for the most part, he's not bad.
But I expect that. I can't immediately come up with a single example of when I thought he was bad.
(25:10):
He even did a bang-up job of covering Knocking on Heaven's Door.
Paula Patton also has a commanding presence. She's one of those people.
When she's on the screen, your eyes just immediately go to her. Her facial expressions are compelling.
Her delivery, though, sometimes it feels flat. It makes it hard for me to gauge her as an actor.
And I've not seen her in a lot either, to be fair. Likewise, Amy Smart, she's perfectly fine.
She does give us by far the most disturbing visual image in all the film.
(25:33):
But her role is just so abbreviated. I'm not sure she was ever an A-lister or an It Girl.
But she was just coming off recent successes. The Butterfly Effect, Just Friends, Crank.
I guess Crank was a success. I don't know. Weird film.
It feels as if she were stuck in this small role, though, simply for name recognition,
because she's the only other actor who's billed.
But I think for the standout, I'm going to have to mention Cameron Boyce,
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who plays Ben and Amy's six-year-old son, Michael.
To be such a young actor, he's capable of such a range of emotions.
So mostly he's just a sweet, innocent grade schooler he's supposed to be.
There's that moment in the middle of the night where he screams and says there's a person in the mirror
and his mother brushes it off as a nightmare and goes back to bed. That's all we parents would do.
We see him again staring in the mirror before pulling the covers over his head, and he looks genuinely terrified.
(26:20):
Later, he's sitting on the ground looking in the mirror, and he gets up to walk away,
and his reflection doesn't move. It's sort of just leering back at Amy. And he's smiling.
It would almost be like sweet and angelic, except for the fact we realize this is the mirror reflection
of a kid who just got up and walked away and is no longer there, which makes it so sinister.
And we all know when a kid looks sinister, it's doubly scary.
(26:42):
Evil mirror image Michael in the climax is also pretty well done.
So many actors, I think that age would have overplayed it, but Boyce keeps it just at the right level.
Not underplayed, not overplayed. Sweet spot.
Boyce would go on to do several shows for Disney, as well as a recurring role opposite Catherine Hahn
in Mrs. Fletcher, as well as a role in the show Paradise City.
Tragically, he was found dead in his Los Angeles home in 2019, just 20 years old.
(27:06):
He had recently been diagnosed with epilepsy and had suffered a seizure.
It's heartbreaking to think of any life so soon gone.
It's clear from this film that even at that early age, he had real talent.
We can never imagine what great performances we missed out on due to this tragedy,
but though his time was brief, I guess he left a mark, and he'll be remembered.
Reminds us of the brilliance of a talent gone far too soon.
(27:28):
Yeah, I'm definitely running long at this point, so I'm just going to let my discussion of the PG-13 horror,
the splat packs response, and the rise of the unrated DVD editions that I had interspersed in my earlier discussion serve as cultural context.
Which, by the way, did you know the DVD I have has an unrated edition?
A little bit of trivia. Very little.
Sutherland's character is named Ben Carson, and just a few years later, a brain surgeon turned politician would,
(27:53):
on more than one occasion, seek the Republican nod for the presidential candidacy,
and would also become Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Trump.
That person's name? Ben Carson.
Speaking of those practical effects that Aja is so fond of, the dangling, ripped-open jaw of Angela was all prosthetic.
During takes, when Amy Smart needed to eat or drink something, they just had to feed her through a straw
(28:16):
because she was unable to open her mouth wide enough to get anything else in.
There was a direct-to-video sequel starring Nick Stahl that was released in 2010.
There are only four reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, so it doesn't give it a score.
I will tell you that three of the four are negative, and the fourth simply just makes the case that it wasn't as bad as you think it should be.
Metacritic doesn't even have an entry for the sequel.
The Popcorn Meter on Rotten Tomatoes does have over 300 reviews, and the film scores a meager 20%.
(28:41):
I have seen it, but I honestly remember nothing about it, except afterwards I thought it wasn't very good.
Perhaps if I had watched the unrated version.
All right, let's wrap this joker up. Go to our last segment, Shelf Esteem.
This is, of course, for those of you who are new to this program, by the way, hi.
Or if you just need a refresher, there are five shelves on my Curio where I keep all my DVDs.
(29:02):
So we basically adopt the bartender's model.
Top shelf for the very best stuff, rot gut goes on the bottom shelf,
and then you've got second shelf, mid shelf, and fourth shelf in between all of that.
It's a recurring theme, but I can honestly say I'm glad I went back and revisited this film.
Did I enjoy watching it this time around? No, no, not at all.
It's just not a good film.
(29:24):
But the research led me to find some interesting tidbits about the Splat Pack,
and it led me to ruminate on the era of PG-13 horror.
You know, I had heard the term Splat Pack before,
but I don't think I ever realized that they had a link to this reaction of the teen-friendly,
toothless horror films of the aughts.
It's nice to know that not only am I far from the only one with an intense,
(29:45):
perhaps irrational hatred of those films.
I mean, after all, The Ring and Insidious are not all that bad.
But I'm also in good company. The likes of Roth, Wan, Zombie.
The film wasn't so bad it made me lose my faith in Alexandria Aja.
In fact, Crawl came after Mirrors, and while it's a film, it breaks no new ground in the genre.
It's still a good thriller that's worth watching, and I do have it on DVD,
(30:06):
so it'll probably make its way into this podcast at some point or another.
I haven't even mentioned Horns, which is decent, right? Daniel Radcliffe.
He has a new film out right now called Never Let Go, and it was released on September 20th,
so it's likely still showing in a theater near you.
I'm not sure I'm going to check it out on the big screen, but I am going to watch it,
for no other reason, because it stars Halle Berry, and I'll watch anything Halle Berry's in,
(30:28):
unless it's a re-watch of Catwoman and then no thank you.
As for Mirrors, it's the worst of Aja's output, at least the ones I've seen.
There are moments, but most of them are just simply jump scares.
And out of all the showdowns with demon-possessed nuns I've seen,
and oddly, I've seen quite a few, this is one of the worst.
Probably the worst. Almost venturing into parody and becoming unintentionally funny.
(30:52):
Not even the extra minute of gore added by the unrated version.
By the way, did I mention there's an unrated version on my DVD?
Not even that can save this one.
So I think we already know where this one's going, but if not, let's kill the suspense
and just come out with it.
I'm placing Mirrors on...
The Fourth Shelf.
Fourth Shelf films are films that have significant flaws or only appeal to specific tastes.
(31:18):
Watch if you're interested or a fan of the genre.
Horror fans need to watch it.
You'll appreciate some of the moments more than the general movie-going audience.
Splat Pack enthusiasts, of course, you gotta see it for the sake of completion.
And yeah, I mean, key for Sutherland fans, check it out.
And the rest of you, I guess, stick to staring into actual mirrors in the morning when you're getting ready.
(31:39):
You'll get more out of that.
Alright, the Halloween extravaganza continues next week.
I'm trying to vary up the tone slightly for the sake of variety.
For example, in two weeks we'll be considering Rob Zombie's Lords of Salem,
but in between those two Splat Pack films, we'll be looking at a film that's a bit more lighthearted.
It's one that I make sure I watch every October anyway.
(32:00):
I'm not even sure why.
I suppose it's because while I love Halloween for everything that is macabre and dark,
that it's an excuse to really delve into the dark side of human nature,
I also have to appreciate the theatricality and the over-the-top nature of it.
It is, after all, a carnival-esque night of subversion and campiness as well,
and this film encompasses a bit of both of those tones, though mostly the campy.
(32:23):
To top it off, it manages to capture the essence of and pay homage to the old Universal Monsters.
So next week we're going to Transylvania and Castle of Dracula with the 2004 film Van Helsing.
The film is currently streaming on Netflix as well as playing on the Bravo and the E-Networks,
if you still use that old thing called cable TV.
So give it a watch.
(32:44):
So long as you don't take it too seriously, and the film doesn't either, so why should you?
You'll have a good time.
Hey, you might even start a new October tradition yourself, right?
If you do watch it and want to talk about any points, feel free to shoot me an email at steven at ShelfCriticism.com,
and that's S-T-E-P-H-E-N.
You can also find the podcast on Facebook at ShelfCriticism.
(33:05):
And don't forget about my other podcast, Reel It, where I'm joined by my colleague, the extraordinary McKenzie.
You can find that just about everywhere you get your podcasts fixed,
as well as our official website, ReelItPodcast.com, and social media at ReelItPodcast.
Remember that's R-E-E-L, as in a film reel.
Just last week we dropped our latest episode covering the 1998 Neil Gaiman novel and the 2007 film Stardust.
(33:30):
And we had a whole lot of fun with that.
I just had fun this past couple of weeks, I guess.
Possessed mirrors, falling stars, tongue-in-cheek vampire slayers,
a whole extra minute of splattering gore in an unrated version.
So anyway, until next time, DVD aficionados, remember to treat yourself to a little shelf indulgence of your own.
(33:51):
Amelia, sing us a song.
Shelf Criticism is an Owls of Palace production.
This podcast is in no way connected with the educational institutions the host is employed by.
(34:14):
The opinions expressed herein are solely those of the host
and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other organisation with which he is affiliated.
Most images displayed are public domain.
Images and stills from films, descriptions of scenes, and passages from books are used for educational and critical purposes
and not for profit and therefore fall under the terms of fair use.
(34:46):
Don't be scared, Mommy.
We just want to come play with us.
I'm not the one looking into the mirrors, but they're looking back at me.
(00:06):
There's no one looking back at you through the mirrors.
AHHHHH!
Welcome to Shelf Criticism. Meet your host, Stephen, a scholar of literature and film by day, and by night a cinematic archaeologist with a penchant for everything from art house to popular to outright trash cinema.
(00:43):
Over the past quarter century, Stephen has amassed an eclectic DVD collection, now occupying five shells of a curio cabinet in his living room.
Each week, he bravely selects one of these titles to dissect. Join him as he unearths everything from obscure gems to cinematic missteps.
From blockbuster hits to forgotten flops, each film gets the critical once over it probably doesn't deserve but will absolutely receive.
(01:09):
So grab your popcorn and settle in. It's time to dive into the diverse world of Shelf Criticism.
Welcome to the first of a series of special editions of Shelf Criticism.
For me, I start thinking about Halloween a little earlier than most folks. And by that, I mean November 1st.
(01:33):
Every day is Halloween, at least for me, or as the viral video clip from Ava Ryan put it,
Why do you like Halloween so much?
There's always Halloween in my soul.
I normally don't go wild over fad internet video clips, but you know that one just spoke to me.
I say all that to say, all the month of October I will be rolling out horror flicks. Lord knows my DVD shelf has enough of them.
(01:55):
My late wife loved them as much as I did. Good ones, bad ones, so bad they're good ones, so bad they're painful ones.
We tore through so many year round, but especially in the month of October.
We spent a lot of time cuddled on the couch, all the lights off, watching the forces of darkness wreak havoc on unwitting characters.
In the next few weeks, you can expect a decent mix from the comedy horror fare of Van Helsing,
one I will never not give an October rewatch to, all the way to the twisted atmospheric world of Rob Zombie's violent aesthetic.
(02:23):
Today, however, we're taking a look at a film by director Alexandre Aja.
And again, he's French. I am so sorry to the French listeners.
I try my best. I really do, but I'm just a stupid American.
Alexandre Aja, something along those lines.
Of course, he's famous for such thrilling white knuckle suspense films as High Tension and Crawl, and surprisingly also the horror comedy Piranha.
(02:45):
Hey, dude's given us two Animal Attack films, so you know I have to like him.
This film was released in 2008 right in the middle of that dreadful run of PG-13 horror that gave us Pablum like the grudge,
One Missed Call, The Haunting in Connecticut, and The Apparition.
Lord, that was a miserable time to be a horror aficionado.
But this film was a hard R, even having to dial back a bit of the gore to secure that rating.
(03:06):
To come about when it did, it surely felt like a welcome pivot to what we were suffering through.
I mean, don't even pretend like you didn't rage-hate the boogeyman.
Even Emily Deschanel couldn't save it.
Today's shelf pick is Mirrors, starring Kiefer Sutherland.
So what I do in this segment is just simply take out my DVD, have a glance at it, describe it to you, read all the fun stuff on it.
Let's get started.
(03:27):
My copy of this film, for starters, has a yellow sticker in the upper right corner that reads,
Guaranteed Preplayed, $14.99.
There is no way in the world I paid that price for this thing.
It also has the name Ashley scribbled on it, so hi Ashley.
Thanks for hawking this thing so many years ago so I can talk about it today.
The first line of text at the top is simply the billing for the film's top star, Kiefer Sutherland.
Beneath is the title of the film, Mirrors.
(03:50):
It's done in all caps and that stylistic touch of having the second R in the middle of the word written backwards,
mirrors, get it?
Sutherland stands on a staircase covered in glass shards while in the mirror behind him it looks like four agonizing souls are pressing their faces against a large mirror.
Scratched across the glass just above Sutherland's head, much in the manner that the word Esiker gets etched into the mirror in the film, is the word Unrated.
(04:14):
Believe me, they really want you to know this DVD contains the Unrated version of the film.
Case in point, the text at the bottom reads, Shocking Unrated Cut, Too Terrifying for Theaters.
To accent this, the words Unrated Cut and Terrifying are in red while the rest of the text is in white.
And it's in all caps too so that must mean it's important to note, right?
Underneath this, also in white, though not in all caps, that's a good thing, is the phrase includes both the theatrical version and unrated version of the film.
(04:40):
Though oddly enough all the major words are capitalized as if this were a title, who knows?
On the DVD back, again it reads in all blood red caps, Stare into the Face of Terror.
Mercifully only one exclamation point at least.
The synopsis is this, Look deeper into the world of mirrors with this thrill packed DVD featuring an Unrated Cut, plus the original cut of the film.
(05:01):
Yet again an unnecessary comma between cut and plus.
Seriously, is this something they teach in cover copy composition 101?
Anyway, next paragraph.
Attempting to pick up the pieces of his life, a disgraced former cop, Kiefer Sutherland, takes a routine job guarding the charred ruins of a once famous department store.
But the terrifying images he sees in the store's ornate mirrors will send him on a pulse pounding mission to unravel the secrets of the building's past before they destroy his entire life.
(05:29):
Beneath there's a picture of Sutherland shining a flashlight at a mirror that has a strangely nondescript, screaming face in it.
It's a scene that's not in the film, I'm pretty sure.
In the upper right corner we get three smaller photos, all in the film.
Ben's reflection staring into the mirror he's fired gunshots into outside of Amy's house.
You can see Amy in the background too.
Michael sitting in the pool of water on the floor staring at his own reflection.
(05:52):
And then a shot of Angela leaned against a door frame for no other reason than to remind us, a handful of people who love varsity blues are just friends, that hey, Amy Smart's also in this flick.
Oh, and beneath that, we are informed, includes both a theatrical version and the unrated version of the film.
Again, with a strange capitalization.
You know, I can't be completely certain, but I think maybe, just maybe, there's an unrated version of the film on this DVD.
(06:16):
Beneath this, there's a common declaration that this film is rated R for strong violence, disturbing images, language, and brief nudity.
Beside that, we're informed that, and I quote, the unrated version of this film is not rated.
Was that really necessary?
Talk about something that should be filed away at the Department of Redundancy's department.
Anyway, that sentence continues, and contains additional sequences of strong violence, disturbing images, language, and brief nudity.
(06:44):
Maybe we should pause here and talk about the unrated version of the film. It's on there, I promise.
As is my custom when given the option to watch the rated or unrated, I always select unrated.
It's not that I crave the more salacious content necessarily.
It's just that typically the unrated is the director's truer vision, not the final cut that's been sliced and diced to satisfy both the Gucci, loafer wearing execs,
who see dollar signs instead of artistic expression, as well as the Pearl Clutching MPAA ratings board,
(07:10):
whose unwritten standards and rules have held a stranglehold on the film industry for decades, one far more deleterious than the old Hays Code, I might argue.
But I digress. If you want to go down that rabbit hole, check out the documentary, This Film Not Yet Rated.
It's a wonderful expose of how hypocritical and regressive the rating system is.
Back to the issue. The description here that the unrated version, which in case you couldn't figure out is not rated,
(07:32):
and I quote, contains additional sequences of strong violence, disturbing images, language, and brief nudity.
The way it's worded, it sounds as if it contains a little more of each of the four categories,
the same four categories I might add that are rattled off under the R ratings warning.
I didn't watch the R rated version too and jot down the differences.
I do have a life that, okay, I don't have a life, but I still have no inclination to be that thorough.
(07:54):
Some putz on the internet will have done that for me.
But it does turn out that this most ballyhooed unrated version, too terrifying for theaters as they tell us, is barely more than a minute longer.
It has a bit more gore, specifically more blood splatter in the opening sequence, and a bit more in the scene where Angela does that thing with her jaw that, yeah, that's a visual that's gonna stay with you.
Still, that's added strong violence and disturbing images, yeah, but the wording makes it seem like we get a little bit of all four.
(08:19):
I harp on this simply because I wonder, is this an effective strategy?
Would being duped into thinking one was getting several more minutes of guts and blood and scares and F-bombs and maybe TNA2, the wording suggesting all of that,
would that cause a person to snatch this off the shelf and take it home?
Is that why Ashley grabbed this guaranteed pre-played copy from the ridiculous price of $14.99?
(08:40):
All I know is if you fell for that marketing ploy, you'd be left with about a minute's worth of extra blood splatter and a whole lot of buyer's remorse.
I usually mention if any special features are lauded on the back, and it does have the typical boxes that describe the language offer, the Dolby output for them all, the subtitles, the aspect ratio, and that's it.
Although I do have on the highest authority that an added special feature is the unrated version of this film.
(09:03):
How I came to own it. I usually spend more time on how I came to own these DVDs, but I got a little carried away with the cover description there.
So to balance it out, I'll keep this part really simple. My wife and I did see this one in the theaters.
She was a really big fan, not just of horror films, but also of Kiefer Sutherland.
Matter of fact, in 2017, Sutherland came to my corner of the world to record at the famed music studio Muscle Shoals Sound.
Not to be confused with the famed music studio fame, of course. And he also played a gig here. Neither she nor I knew even played music, but we still bought tickets and took in the show.
(09:32):
It was a good night of music. Though I haven't listened to his band since. Honestly, all I really remember is covers of Gordon Lightfoot and Bob Dylan, probably because they were the only two songs I recognized.
Still, we liked the film. Again, I think the word refreshing was bandied about a bit.
How nice to see some actual blood. How nice to be in a theater filled with actual adults and not snot-nosed high schoolers on dates.
(09:53):
I'm fairly sure the DVD was another of my many pawn shop purchases, probably paying more along the line of a dollar, two dollars, as opposed to poor Ashley, who forked out the exorbitant rate of $14.99 for a used copy.
Did we really used to do that? It seems so expensive.
For that price today, it'd better be brand new Blu-ray and have a digital code too. Not to mention some appealing special features. Maybe an unrated version.
(10:15):
And it's not like I'm exactly frugal either. I just spent more than $14.99 on a single glass of bourbon last night with my guys at the bar. But a used DVD? Man, Ashley, you got robbed.
So let's move into the critical reception. I liked this film the first time I saw it, and so did my wife. The critics, on the other hand, ouch.
It holds a paltry 16% on Rotten Tomatoes and barely fares better on Metacritic with a score of 35.
(10:39):
As usual, moviegoers were just a little more charitable. Still not exactly thrilled. It scores 44% on the popcorn meter of Rotten Tomatoes and a slightly better than average 5.9 on Metacritic's user reviews.
The best critical zinger comes from Frank Schek of The Hollywood Reporter.
This remake of a South Korean movie ultimately provides fewer scares than the average aging baby boomer feels every time they look into a reflective surface.
(11:02):
I concur, though you might as well just toss Gen X or that too, because I'm on board.
That said, I thought we'd have a look at Rob Nelson's review in Variety, which contains the interesting tagline of, and I quote,
Softcore horror at its best, failed allegory at worst, mirrors reflects little beyond Splat Pack auteur Alexandre Aja's desire to push his genre into less punishing and more profitable territory.
(11:25):
We should probably stop and talk about that term, Splat Pack.
It's coined by the critic Alan Jones in a magazine called Total Film.
He describes a new generation of auteur filmmakers pushing back against the wave of PG-13 horror films or as he styles it, and I quote,
All those toothless remakes of Asian hits starring Jennifer Connelly, Naomi Watts and Sarah Michelle Geller.
Interestingly enough, Mirrors is also a remake of the 2003 South Korea horror film Into the Mirror.
(11:51):
While it's necessary to note that the films Jones mentions are all of Japanese origin, and there are certainly cultural differences between them,
there is a hint of irony in the statement nonetheless.
Still, Aja is lumped alongside others like Eli Roth, James Wan, Rob Zombie.
In another Variety article titled Blood Brothers, Pamela McClintock says of this ilk,
Roth and a cadre of fellow directors, all closely knit, young and well-educated, are introducing a level of terror, torture and depravity that would make Freddy Krueger run for cover.
(12:21):
Audiences are lapping it up with the low-budget films routinely beating studios' pricey entrants at the box office.
And indeed, she's right. It's worth noting that the DVD edition of Hostel actually outsold the line The Witch and the Wardrobe at Walmart upon their initial release.
Clearly, audiences were clamoring for this sort of film.
The other characteristic of the Splat Pack was their war with the MPAA, which I've already alluded to.
(12:42):
Aja's French-language film Halt Tentionel, I'm so sorry French people, American audiences know it as High Tension, received an NC-17 rating specifically for the violence.
I didn't find it that over-the-top personally, much less so than his remake of The Hills Have Eyes, which also had a battle with the ratings.
Quick note on that. My research into this led me to a book called Selling the Splat Pack, the DVD revolution in the horror film by Mark Barnard, an Irish film scholar whom I've mentioned on this podcast before.
(13:10):
I have ordered that book now because if I ever needed a critical companion, it's this one. It's almost like it was invented in some ways for self-criticism.
But I should note that there's a chapter titled The DVD Revolution in the Horror Film Take Two, The Rise of the Unrated.
Somehow it seems like we're on the same wavelength, though my earlier observations about the marketing of the unrated version of this were formed well before I knew this book even existed.
(13:31):
Oh, and in case you didn't know, my DVD of Mirrors features an unrated version.
Back to the critic. Nelson continues, Unconvincingly set in New York City, Romania lensed Mirrors' Cas Bucuret's unfinished Academy of Sciences building as a former department store patrolled by Ben Carson, Sutherland, a recovering alcoholic recently suspended from the NYPD.
(13:52):
And I did find this interesting as well. Remember back when so many films were set in New York City? That did become rather expensive to film there, so a lot of productions moved other places.
Toronto, for example, being a stand-in. Likewise, a lot of other films found other settings, whether they be in the heartland of middle America or a stand-in for another big city.
The film wanted some urban flair. Chicago just talked about the breakup, which is set there.
(14:14):
Earlier on in the film, I did think to myself, how nice to see a New York City film again.
And then I began to realize the more I watched just how, you know, aside from the stock footage of taxis and bustling streets, this was so not New York City.
Turns out most of it was shot in Bucharest, Romania. Nelson's keen eye catches this nicely.
He continues, Aja, who co-wrote the screenplay with Gregory Levesue, so sorry, French people,
(14:38):
strains to lend the horror of a psychological dimension as when Ben frantically strips his wife's house of its mirrors.
But the film's only frisson derives from a handful of cheap cattle prod style shocks, mostly revealed in mirror reflections, Natch.
While the dialogue is hamstrung by the likes of Ben's ridiculously rhetorical question, what if the mirrors are reflecting something that's beyond our reality?
(14:59):
And I would say not only psychological, but also philosophical. And I'm going to talk about that in just a moment, so we'll put a pen in it for now.
But first, allow me to address those cattle prod style shocks, better known as jump scares.
There are so many egregious amounts. They come so often and honestly, they work with a sudden flash of the camera and the loud orchestra beats.
But the word cheap that Nelson uses is fitting. Whether it's a startled pigeon or some strange occurrence in the reflection,
(15:24):
it's just too much over too little that detracts from the overall story.
I don't recall Aja being overly reliant on jump scares in his other films, so it comes as a bit of a surprise here.
Finally, Nelson says, along with Rob Zombie, The Devil's Rejects, Aja remains the most visually gifted of the Splat Packers,
although Mirror sports little of this disturbingly arty carnage that distinguished both the Hill's remake and the strongest,
(15:46):
most settling work, the French Halt Tentionel. Again, there's very little I can add here. I certainly don't disagree with his take.
You know, the term auteur gets bandied about often with the Splat Pack directors.
And it's true, each member of this fraternity, currently an all male group to my knowledge, has a very distinct visual style.
When you're watching a Rob Zombie film in particular, it's immediately clear who's behind the camera.
(16:07):
The same can be said, perhaps to a lesser degree, for Juan, Roth, Aja.
Some of Aja's hallmarks are definitely present here, and though he's occasionally made some exceptions,
Piranha immediately coming to mind, he generally favors muted tones, often cool or sometimes almost desaturated.
His films lean into over the top graphic violence, and he likes to use practical effects over CGI to kind of give it that gritty, realistic edge.
(16:32):
He also tends to place his characters in tight, claustrophobic settings to heighten the suspense, and we see every bit of that on display in Mirrors.
But then there are aspects where Aja usually excels that are glaringly absent here.
Which brings me to the next segment, my take.
Another hallmark of Aja's is typically his precise breakneck pacing.
Both high tension and crawl come to mind immediately.
(16:54):
There's a slight lull in the beginning where the viewer gets acquainted with the characters, and we build a little rapport and pathos with them.
And then we're thrown into a steadily escalating level of action, tension, and threats.
While Mirrors certainly has the escalating suspense, the pacing itself just feels off.
For example, it seems Ben far too easily buys into the fact that there is something supernatural going on with the Mirrors.
(17:16):
While everyone else around him, rightfully so, thinks he's off his rocker, we never see the same sense of self-reflection in him, no pun intended.
Or at least only a quick nod and a wink in one instance.
His estranged wife Amy, who's a medical examiner, so someone who has a physician-level knowledge about the human body and mind,
immediately asks him what medication he's on to treat his alcoholism, and though we're never given a particular name of the drug,
(17:38):
she looks at the bottle and remarks that it's powerful stuff.
It seems that realistically, most people inhabiting the real world would be entertaining the same thoughts.
Not only is the medicine a strong psychotropic, he's been through an enormous amount of trauma.
Either or, the combination of both should be enough for him to at least consider that the hauntings exist only in his mind.
After all, he's working overnight in an abandoned burnt-out shell of a department store full of pigeons and seared mannequins and statues.
(18:04):
Even the hardiest of souls and the steeliest realistic minds would probably start to psych themselves out a bit.
And this is going to sound like one of those cake-and-eat-it-too things, but at the same time, the film feels long.
More than one reviewer I surveyed used the term plotting.
It doesn't have that same fast pace typical of Aja, and it shows on the runtime, too.
Crawl clocks in at an hour 27 minutes, Piranha an hour 28, and High Tension is an hour 29.
(18:30):
The unrated version, if you're curious, does bring a little bit more than the paltry minute-plus of mirrors, closing the credits at the 95-minute mark.
Mirrors, on the other hand, an hour and 51 minutes, and subtract literally one minute for the R-rated version.
I don't think that point is unrelated to the pacing issue.
The exposition also leans into some of the laziest shortcuts that I abhor as well.
(18:52):
I know films don't have the luxury of narrative digressions or quick-apositives like novels do, so it's understandable.
Conveying character backstory can be a challenge.
But it's frustrating when movies resort to dialogue no real human being would actually ever say.
Case in point, at one moment, Angela looks at me and says, I'm your sister.
Okay, I too have a sister, and I don't really need her to articulate her relation to me.
(19:15):
I'm pretty sure I was aware of it when she came yowling into this world.
Likewise, Ben's exasperated declaration to Amy that I killed a man.
I mean, yeah, she knows that.
Though we never get the entire story, we're meant to infer that Ben was a police officer who shot and killed an undercover cop.
The camera zooms in and lingers on a newspaper clipping for an inordinate amount of time during an early scene that tells us all of this.
(19:36):
So just tell me, do people really keep newspaper clippings of their greatest failures,
ones that drive them to drinking and wrecking their families right there on their desk,
and likewise the declarations like, I haven't had a drink in three months?
I can see how he might actually say that in a conversation between him and his wife, but it still feels shoehorned.
I mean, there might as well just be a big flashing light above their heads going ding, exposition, ding, and that ending.
(20:00):
What can I even say?
Now, I actually liked, sorta, the final twist.
There's a false dawn where Ben thinks he's gotten away, but nobody's really noticing him as he's walking around,
and then he looks around and every bit of text that he sees is written backwards,
which clues us in that he's been sucked into a mirror dimension, I guess.
And that's fine.
But what gets us there in that third act is what bothers me.
He kidnaps a nun.
(20:21):
I mean, just let that sink in for a second.
Yes, we understand he's doing it to save his family, and he has no choice.
And also, I mean, having been well-versed in the film tropes that we know so well as an audience,
we understand that nun should already be self-sacrificial enough to merely go along,
to literally face her demons down in order to save Ben's wife and children.
Still, he kidnaps a nun.
(20:42):
Had he not gotten sucked into that mirror dimension at the end,
he'd be in all sorts of legal trouble.
Can you imagine trying to explain that one to investigators?
Worse, however, is when the demon possesses Anna Essaker again,
turning her into a soulless, cadaverous creature who shrieks and runs across walls
in that jerky motion that every stereotypical demon and ghost over the last three decades of filmmaking has.
(21:03):
If that isn't bad enough, like, Ben throws down with this thing.
Like, seriously, he's punching it, he's shooting at it, he's shoving it into a broken pipe to impale it.
He ignites a giant explosion to reduce what was once poor sister Anna into ash.
It's honestly so absurd that it creeps into the realm of hilarity instead.
It's a finale so outlandish it feels like a different film altogether.
It's a far cry from the eerie tension Aja usually delivers,
(21:26):
and it's proof of Mirror's, I guess, ultimate identity crisis.
Finally, and I'm going to be brief here because I'm probably going to run over long anyway,
this is a film that is perched to venture into some pretty deep, thoughtful philosophical realms.
The Splatpacks' oeuvre is often cited as being multi-layered, more than popcorn entertainment or gross-out cinema,
that it comments on society writ large.
(21:48):
Hostel's been noted, for example, for its commentary on the perception of Americans in Europe
during the time of the globally unpopular Iraq War.
In fact, most of the films coming from this faction are usually seen as commenting on the world post-911
and the vast turbid societal ripples that that moment catalyzed.
Perhaps with a burnt-out haul of a once-great department store,
there's something to be said about rampant consumerism in the world.
(22:09):
The President's advice to Americans after the tragedy of 9-11 comes to mind immediately, right?
All he told us was, go shopping.
More so, however, while having little to do with the historical trends going on at the time of the film's release,
the premise of Mirror's reflection and the light sets this film up to go to a number of different philosophical directions.
From the ancient myth of narcissists to the mythology of Jung,
(22:31):
the individual human being gazing at themselves in reflection is really a profound concept.
It's something we take for granted when we comb our hair, we brush our teeth, we wash our hands,
but it's in these moments we see ourselves in a different perspective, from a different angle.
We see ourselves the way others see us.
And how often does that reflection staring back at us differ wildly from what we perceive ourselves?
(22:52):
How often do we face our metaphorical demons as we have a one-person staring contest in front of a slab of reflective glass?
Ben is washed up on leave from his career as a police detective, carrying guilt and trauma from an accident that...
it was an accident, but he was the cause of it.
His alcoholism, his temper flaring, his estrangement from his family, or as Nelson points out,
(23:14):
if Aja, son of a French director, Alexandre Arcadi, I can't, I'm sorry,
marriage mixta, marrage mixta, I don't know, mixed marriage I assume is the name of this film in English,
and film reviewer Marie-Jo Joann intends to offer a self-reflexive critique of cinema in mirrors.
The results are nowhere near the screen.
So much of film studies deals with this issue of us as spectators,
(23:38):
and it's nowhere near as new as the relatively nascent discipline of film studies,
or even the creation of the technology to capture motion pictures for that matter.
As far back as ancient Greece, when Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and the like were staging their tragedies and dramas,
the culture was already aware of the voyeuristic nature of viewing these fictional representations.
(24:00):
I think a fellow named Aristotle wrote a good bit about this actually.
From Laura Mulvey's take on the male gaze and scopophilic objectification
to Danielle Mortorano's recent work on voyeurism in films like Blue Velvet and American Beauty,
the self-aware nature of being a viewer, watching something you shouldn't be watching if it were actually happening,
peering into the characters' private moments and their corners of the world you would never see,
(24:24):
it's a real focus of film studies.
And it also makes its way into meta or semi-meta commentary in film itself.
If ever a film had that softball tossed at it, it's mirrors.
And mirrors stepped up to the plate, took a swing, and whiffed.
Standout performances? It should surprise absolutely no one that Kiefer Sutherland carries the film like the veteran talent that he is.
(24:46):
I think he plays it pretty solid. He's the next cop, which means he can't be too frightened and jumpy.
But he's also going through an intense mental health crisis, meaning he can't be just catatonic either.
He has his outbursts and moments, and okay, perhaps he does get a bit too Jack Bauer-esque in a few moments.
Kidnapping a nun, am I right? But for the most part, he's not bad.
But I expect that. I can't immediately come up with a single example of when I thought he was bad.
(25:10):
He even did a bang-up job of covering Knocking on Heaven's Door.
Paula Patton also has a commanding presence. She's one of those people.
When she's on the screen, your eyes just immediately go to her. Her facial expressions are compelling.
Her delivery, though, sometimes it feels flat. It makes it hard for me to gauge her as an actor.
And I've not seen her in a lot either, to be fair. Likewise, Amy Smart, she's perfectly fine.
She does give us by far the most disturbing visual image in all the film.
(25:33):
But her role is just so abbreviated. I'm not sure she was ever an A-lister or an It Girl.
But she was just coming off recent successes. The Butterfly Effect, Just Friends, Crank.
I guess Crank was a success. I don't know. Weird film.
It feels as if she were stuck in this small role, though, simply for name recognition,
because she's the only other actor who's billed.
But I think for the standout, I'm going to have to mention Cameron Boyce,
(25:56):
who plays Ben and Amy's six-year-old son, Michael.
To be such a young actor, he's capable of such a range of emotions.
So mostly he's just a sweet, innocent grade schooler he's supposed to be.
There's that moment in the middle of the night where he screams and says there's a person in the mirror
and his mother brushes it off as a nightmare and goes back to bed. That's all we parents would do.
We see him again staring in the mirror before pulling the covers over his head, and he looks genuinely terrified.
(26:20):
Later, he's sitting on the ground looking in the mirror, and he gets up to walk away,
and his reflection doesn't move. It's sort of just leering back at Amy. And he's smiling.
It would almost be like sweet and angelic, except for the fact we realize this is the mirror reflection
of a kid who just got up and walked away and is no longer there, which makes it so sinister.
And we all know when a kid looks sinister, it's doubly scary.
(26:42):
Evil mirror image Michael in the climax is also pretty well done.
So many actors, I think that age would have overplayed it, but Boyce keeps it just at the right level.
Not underplayed, not overplayed. Sweet spot.
Boyce would go on to do several shows for Disney, as well as a recurring role opposite Catherine Hahn
in Mrs. Fletcher, as well as a role in the show Paradise City.
Tragically, he was found dead in his Los Angeles home in 2019, just 20 years old.
(27:06):
He had recently been diagnosed with epilepsy and had suffered a seizure.
It's heartbreaking to think of any life so soon gone.
It's clear from this film that even at that early age, he had real talent.
We can never imagine what great performances we missed out on due to this tragedy,
but though his time was brief, I guess he left a mark, and he'll be remembered.
Reminds us of the brilliance of a talent gone far too soon.
(27:28):
Yeah, I'm definitely running long at this point, so I'm just going to let my discussion of the PG-13 horror,
the splat packs response, and the rise of the unrated DVD editions that I had interspersed in my earlier discussion serve as cultural context.
Which, by the way, did you know the DVD I have has an unrated edition?
A little bit of trivia. Very little.
Sutherland's character is named Ben Carson, and just a few years later, a brain surgeon turned politician would,
(27:53):
on more than one occasion, seek the Republican nod for the presidential candidacy,
and would also become Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Trump.
That person's name? Ben Carson.
Speaking of those practical effects that Aja is so fond of, the dangling, ripped-open jaw of Angela was all prosthetic.
During takes, when Amy Smart needed to eat or drink something, they just had to feed her through a straw
(28:16):
because she was unable to open her mouth wide enough to get anything else in.
There was a direct-to-video sequel starring Nick Stahl that was released in 2010.
There are only four reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, so it doesn't give it a score.
I will tell you that three of the four are negative, and the fourth simply just makes the case that it wasn't as bad as you think it should be.
Metacritic doesn't even have an entry for the sequel.
The Popcorn Meter on Rotten Tomatoes does have over 300 reviews, and the film scores a meager 20%.
(28:41):
I have seen it, but I honestly remember nothing about it, except afterwards I thought it wasn't very good.
Perhaps if I had watched the unrated version.
All right, let's wrap this joker up. Go to our last segment, Shelf Esteem.
This is, of course, for those of you who are new to this program, by the way, hi.
Or if you just need a refresher, there are five shelves on my Curio where I keep all my DVDs.
(29:02):
So we basically adopt the bartender's model.
Top shelf for the very best stuff, rot gut goes on the bottom shelf,
and then you've got second shelf, mid shelf, and fourth shelf in between all of that.
It's a recurring theme, but I can honestly say I'm glad I went back and revisited this film.
Did I enjoy watching it this time around? No, no, not at all.
It's just not a good film.
(29:24):
But the research led me to find some interesting tidbits about the Splat Pack,
and it led me to ruminate on the era of PG-13 horror.
You know, I had heard the term Splat Pack before,
but I don't think I ever realized that they had a link to this reaction of the teen-friendly,
toothless horror films of the aughts.
It's nice to know that not only am I far from the only one with an intense,
(29:45):
perhaps irrational hatred of those films.
I mean, after all, The Ring and Insidious are not all that bad.
But I'm also in good company. The likes of Roth, Wan, Zombie.
The film wasn't so bad it made me lose my faith in Alexandria Aja.
In fact, Crawl came after Mirrors, and while it's a film, it breaks no new ground in the genre.
It's still a good thriller that's worth watching, and I do have it on DVD,
(30:06):
so it'll probably make its way into this podcast at some point or another.
I haven't even mentioned Horns, which is decent, right? Daniel Radcliffe.
He has a new film out right now called Never Let Go, and it was released on September 20th,
so it's likely still showing in a theater near you.
I'm not sure I'm going to check it out on the big screen, but I am going to watch it,
for no other reason, because it stars Halle Berry, and I'll watch anything Halle Berry's in,
(30:28):
unless it's a re-watch of Catwoman and then no thank you.
As for Mirrors, it's the worst of Aja's output, at least the ones I've seen.
There are moments, but most of them are just simply jump scares.
And out of all the showdowns with demon-possessed nuns I've seen,
and oddly, I've seen quite a few, this is one of the worst.
Probably the worst. Almost venturing into parody and becoming unintentionally funny.
(30:52):
Not even the extra minute of gore added by the unrated version.
By the way, did I mention there's an unrated version on my DVD?
Not even that can save this one.
So I think we already know where this one's going, but if not, let's kill the suspense
and just come out with it.
I'm placing Mirrors on...
The Fourth Shelf.
Fourth Shelf films are films that have significant flaws or only appeal to specific tastes.
(31:18):
Watch if you're interested or a fan of the genre.
Horror fans need to watch it.
You'll appreciate some of the moments more than the general movie-going audience.
Splat Pack enthusiasts, of course, you gotta see it for the sake of completion.
And yeah, I mean, key for Sutherland fans, check it out.
And the rest of you, I guess, stick to staring into actual mirrors in the morning when you're getting ready.
(31:39):
You'll get more out of that.
Alright, the Halloween extravaganza continues next week.
I'm trying to vary up the tone slightly for the sake of variety.
For example, in two weeks we'll be considering Rob Zombie's Lords of Salem,
but in between those two Splat Pack films, we'll be looking at a film that's a bit more lighthearted.
It's one that I make sure I watch every October anyway.
(32:00):
I'm not even sure why.
I suppose it's because while I love Halloween for everything that is macabre and dark,
that it's an excuse to really delve into the dark side of human nature,
I also have to appreciate the theatricality and the over-the-top nature of it.
It is, after all, a carnival-esque night of subversion and campiness as well,
and this film encompasses a bit of both of those tones, though mostly the campy.
(32:23):
To top it off, it manages to capture the essence of and pay homage to the old Universal Monsters.
So next week we're going to Transylvania and Castle of Dracula with the 2004 film Van Helsing.
The film is currently streaming on Netflix as well as playing on the Bravo and the E-Networks,
if you still use that old thing called cable TV.
So give it a watch.
(32:44):
So long as you don't take it too seriously, and the film doesn't either, so why should you?
You'll have a good time.
Hey, you might even start a new October tradition yourself, right?
If you do watch it and want to talk about any points, feel free to shoot me an email at steven at ShelfCriticism.com,
and that's S-T-E-P-H-E-N.
You can also find the podcast on Facebook at ShelfCriticism.
(33:05):
And don't forget about my other podcast, Reel It, where I'm joined by my colleague, the extraordinary McKenzie.
You can find that just about everywhere you get your podcasts fixed,
as well as our official website, ReelItPodcast.com, and social media at ReelItPodcast.
Remember that's R-E-E-L, as in a film reel.
Just last week we dropped our latest episode covering the 1998 Neil Gaiman novel and the 2007 film Stardust.
(33:30):
And we had a whole lot of fun with that.
I just had fun this past couple of weeks, I guess.
Possessed mirrors, falling stars, tongue-in-cheek vampire slayers,
a whole extra minute of splattering gore in an unrated version.
So anyway, until next time, DVD aficionados, remember to treat yourself to a little shelf indulgence of your own.
(33:51):
Amelia, sing us a song.
Shelf Criticism is an Owls of Palace production.
This podcast is in no way connected with the educational institutions the host is employed by.
(34:14):
The opinions expressed herein are solely those of the host
and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other organisation with which he is affiliated.
Most images displayed are public domain.
Images and stills from films, descriptions of scenes, and passages from books are used for educational and critical purposes
and not for profit and therefore fall under the terms of fair use.
(34:46):
Don't be scared, Mommy.
We just want to come play with us.
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