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I’m really not sure why everyone hated Mirrors so much—it performed largely as advertised, and if that wasn’t what you were looking for, then of course you were going to be disappointed.  But for the horror buffs in my crowd, oh yes, this one was a winner.

This one’s all about recently suspended undercover detective Ben Carson, who’s been put on a little of the old “unpaid leave” following the shooting of another police officer.  Forced by circumstances to take whatever job he can find, he winds up working night security at the burned-out remains of a department store.  He eventually learns that the department store was once the site of a mental hospital devoted to the treatment and hopefully eventual cure of schizophrenia.

As most horror fans know, any time the phrase “used to be a mental hospital” comes up in conversation it’s usually an excellent time to start looking for the exit.  Spending any length of time in a building that used to house insane people, especially insane people who may well have died there, is generally not conducive to your own sanity.  Let alone your health.

But anyway, Ben guts it out, and this unleashes a whole slew of problems, including a kind of demon that follows him home and assaults his family by having their mirror images do horrible things to themselves which then translate into their real selves inexplicably suffering the damage.  We all remember the trailers where Amy Smart grabs a hold of her own head and starts pulling.

Now, that’s the biggest thing right there—Mirrors will be spectacularly heavy on the special effects and gore factor.  Even just one scene of a woman pulling her own head in two qualifies a movie for top-level gore ranking by virtue of its sheer over-the-top quality.  We’ll also get lots of interesting effects going on with the mirrors themselves—not only do they reflect horrible things, they also break and shatter in showers of crystalline glory, a scene that’s eminently fun to watch as well as being oddly beautiful.

Now, sure…I’ll grant you that the ending is at least a little outlandish; at LEAST a little; this sucker measures up in the several hundreds for sheer weird.  But I’m convinced that this was done as a way to leave the door open for a sequel.  The DVD also includes an alternate ending just in case you didn’t like the first.

But one thing remains clear throughout the entirety of Mirrors’ proceedings.  This was meant to be a high-volume freaky horror flick and it absolutely delivered.  It had the creepy, it had the gore, it had the weird twist ending—it had what other horror movies strive to provide.  Okay, yes…this isn’t as creepy or scary as the original Korean version—yes, it’s a remake.  You may not have even known that.  But seldom is an American recasting of Asian horror as powerful as the original.  This isn’t to say that the remake is necessarily bad, just deficient.  And Mirrors is definitely pretty good stuff.

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