Starring: Kiefer Sutherland, Paula Patton, Amy Smart
Director: Alexandre Aja
Category: IIB
'Caution: objects may be closer than they appear.' So says a warning printed on the wing mirror of the car driven by Ben Carson, the protagonist in Alexandre Aja's paranormal thriller Mirrors. It's an explicit pointer to the film's theme, that reflections are never as close to reality than one might think.
Unfortunately, it's also a notion that sums up Aja's film, an adaptation of a Korean thriller from 2003, which is a sprawling mess with gaping plot holes and a hackneyed family-in-peril narrative.
Mirrors is also yet another example of Hollywood's cack-handedness at remaking Asian horror films. It retains only the most basic premise of the film that spawned it, Into The Mirror, in that former detective Ben (Kiefer Sutherland, above), disgraced by a shooting incident in which he mistakenly killed a colleague, is forced to take up a new job as a night watchman. But other than that, Aja's film bears little resemblance to the original, from the story itself to the psychological makeup of the characters.