Reviews & Ratings for
Mirrors More at IMDbPro »

4 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
Awkward psychological thriller, 19 May 2002
Author: John Seal from Oakland CA

There's not a great deal to recommend Mirrors, but it does have a few virtues. Location work in New Orleans naturally gives this film a boost, as does an attractive leading lady in Kitty Winn (this was her last feature to date after flirting with the big time in the first two Exorcist films). Peter Donat is still active of course, and he's well cast as the handsome doctor who takes care of the emotionally shattered Winn. Unfortunately the film can't seem to decide whether it's a purely psychological thriller or a straight ahead horror film, and the ending is unsatisfying and unrevealing.

3 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
Goodbye Kitty, 21 July 2004
Author: rufasff

Wow. You know, I was led to a link to "Mirrors" because one of the actresses in it was also in "Manos, The Hands Of Fate(!)".

Yet, I SAW MIRRORS on the big screen at a preview screening at the now

closed "Corenet" theater in Evanston Ill. It was a dreary, depressing experience and when I stayed up years later to see it on late night T.V. I was every bit as depressed.

A hopeless, hapless horror film that is so badly made it is kind of

disorientating. Kitty Winn, who won early glory for "The Panic In Needle Park", said goodbye to movies after whatever happened making this lousy movie. If

you are in to the obscure and the truely awful, you might hunt down a video of Mirrors. Otherwise, just take an hit yourself in the head with a hammer while drunk on malt liquor for the same effect.

3 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
An obscure supernatural thriller that's just fair, but well acted by Kitty Winn., 19 May 2002
Author: ofumalow from United States

This very obscure supernatural thriller evidently had a difficult postproduction history--various sources cite it as being made in 1974 and 1978, and it seems not to have been released in any form (theatrical or video) in the U.S. until 1984. It's definitely a misfire, but not unwatchable, and the major participants are talented enough to suggest this might at one point (before script changes? editorial meddling?) looked pretty solid.

It was yet another 70s disappointment for director Noel Black, whose high promise after the excellent 1968 Tuesday Weld/Anthony Hopkins black comedy "Pretty Poison" fizzled out via such little-seen movies as "Cover Me Babe" (a failed counterculture movie with young Robert Forster), "Jennifer On My Mind" (the movie that killed "Love Story" author-scenarist Erich Segal's briefly hot movie career) and Canadian tax-shelter caper flick "A Man, A Woman and a Bank." Likewise, "Mirrors" did no favors for Kitty Winn, who'd been excellent in "Panic in Needle Park" and the first two "Exorcist" movies.

Too bad, because both Black and Winn do some interesting work here that's thwarted by a muddy and ultimately inconsequential story progress. She plays a newlywed who believes she's become possessed by some sort of voodoo spirit during a New Orleans honeymoon. Supernatural visions plague her, especially whenever she looks into a mirror. But everyone, including her husband, thinks she's simply high-strung and delusional.

The mirror motif in itself isn't quite scary or compelling enough to hang a whole thriller on, and "Mirrors" (also known as "Marianne") spends way too much time teasing potential shocks that are seldom really delivered. The film's refusal to deliver easy "horror" highlights is admirable, recalling at various points "Rosemary's Baby," the original "Exorcist," and its contemporary "Audrey Rose."

Still, there's just not enough payoff here, especially as it all leads to a rote final freeze-frame that's supposed to be chilling but just leaves everything dangling.

Nonetheless, Black handles the actors and atmospherics intelligently, and Winn really holds the film together--like Louise Fletcher and Ellen Burstyn, two other 70s actresses who flirted with above-the-title stardom (and got somewhat further), she's rather ordinary and non-glam looking, but exceptionally skilled at creating character empathy and communicating emotions with or without dialogue. Given that Marianne is pretty much panicked, hysterical or paralyzed by dread from start to finish, it's much to Winn's credit that she keeps this narrow range of reactions credible and interesting throughout. With better material, her performance might have been as memorable as Mia Farrow's in "Rosemary," Catherine Deneuve's in "Repulsion" or Nicole Kidman's in "The Others."

1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
Semi-successful voodoo thriller., 14 August 2011
Author: EyeAskance from fabulous Las Vega$!

Pretty, young Marianne is vacationing with her husband in a New Orleans French Quarter hotel. Nightmares involving mirrors and faces she's seen during her visit begin to plague her, but her suspicions of something sinister are roused when another guest from the hotel ends up mysteriously killed. The following night, her husband dies in his sleep from an evident asthma attack, and Marianne becomes convinced that forces of voodoo are pitted against her. Predictable terror ensues in this pedestrian thriller of the "is it all real, or is she nuts" variety.

It would require excessive leavening to say that MIRRORS a *good* film, yet it does succeed suitably in perpetuating a creeping buildup of tension, and the performances(namely from Kitty Winn and Peter Donat) are fairly solid.

Despite being erratically paced and largely inconclusive, it draws a voltage of lurking menace from the emotional and psychological duress of its central character...an indwelling nerve-center which fuels a troubling atmospheric carriage, variably reminiscent in tone to LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH. This intimacy with the protagonist during her inconsolable spiral of cruelly-induced madness is ably effectuated, and marks the chief distinction which saves MIRRORS from sinking like an iron anchor.

4.5/10. THE SKELETON KEY(2005) incorporates several very similar key elements

2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Noel Black's Mirrors, 14 June 2002

Author: Charles Tatum from North Dakota

Kitty Winn, of "Panic in Needle Park" and the first two "Exorcist"

films learned a lesson after she made this film in 1978...she did

not make another.

Winn and her husband are vacationing in voodoo saturated New

Orleans. The staff of the small hotel they stay at already know this,

and proceed to put an ancient voodoo priestess' curse on her.

Now whenever Winn goes to sleep, she sees people she knows

die, and her dreams are tied into the myriad of mirrors that seem

to be everywhere. After an acquaintance walks through a mirror

and dies, Winn's asthmatic husband dies also. This is where the

film gets bad. Winn is taken to the hospital, where she meets

doctor Peter Donat. He takes a keen interest in her, and lets her

stay in the Big Easy to tie up affairs and get her husband back

home to Illinois. She also keeps running into staff from that hotel,

in addition to other assorted odd business owners from that area.

One too many times, she walks in on conversations that seem to

involve her, until finally she gets on the train out of Louisiana. She

stops in a small town, at an abandoned train station (the film's

scariest scene), and the doctor comes to get her. As she visits the

hotel again, she begins to see that none of this is in her mind, that

these people are trying to get her, and...the film ends.

I like a good ambiguous ending as much as the next guy, but this

thing ended as if they had run out of money. There is no payoff

scene, no climax, and really no explanation for what happened to

Winn during the film. The film makers try to keep you guessing

about whether everything is in her imagination, or being staged by

the local voodoo worshippers, but as a viewer we know it's the

voodoo people (the writers say so). This leaves almost an hour

and a half of Winn walking around rooms in a sleepless stupor,

covering mirrors and muttering to herself.

Black's direction is okay, as I said, the abandoned train station

scene is creepy, but technically the film is inept. The entire film is

dubbed later. There are no natural sounds on the film, and to save

on budget, many scenes involve the camera pointing to one

person while another character is talking. Irritating after the first five

minutes. Winn is okay, but her character is almost unplayable

because she is so "mysterious" she has no notable characteristics. Donat as the doc is probably in on the conspiracy

too, but we never really know for sure.

The musical score is fine, but this film is rated (PG), and never

really lets loose in the scare or gore departments. Ray Bradbury is

credited on here as a "creative consultant," whatever that means,

but none of his genius is evident.

By the time the second half started, and we had to visit Winn's

dreams for the hundredth time, the film lost me. With all the broken

mirrors in this thing, seven years bad luck is light punishment for

the producers. I cannot recommend this.

This is rated (PG) for some physical violence and some adult

situations.

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