Dark Mirror (2007)

A photographer moves her family into a strange old house, where she discovers an alternate reality reflected in the glass... A dark reality that is closing in on her.

Director:

Pablo Proenza

Writers:

Pablo Proenza, Matthew Reynolds

Stars:

Lisa Vidal, David Chisum, Joshua Pelegrin

1 nomination.

Cast

Credited cast:
Lisa Vidal	...	Deborah Martin
David Chisum	...	Jim Martin
Joshua Pelegrin	...	Ian Martin
Lupe Ontiveros	...	Grace
Christine Lakin	...	Tammy
David Farkas	...	Chad
John Newton	...	Brendan
Jim Storm	...	Frank
Tucker Smallwood	...	Detective Williams
Jay Knowlton	...	Detective Vasquez
Jareb Dauplaise	...	Frat Boy
Jean Carol	...	Real Estate Agent
Susan Brindley	...	Professional Woman
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Valerie Cavazos	...	TV Reporter
Marcus DeAnda	...	Rupert Wells (as Marcus De Anda)

Storyline

The housewife and aspirant photographer Deborah Martin is strangely attracted to a house and convinces her husband Jim to buy it. They move from Seattle with their son Ian and Deborah takes a photo of a mirror in the bathroom. She soon discovers that her neighbor is snooping on her family and a stranger is stalking her. She researches the house history and finds that it belonged to a painter who might have killed his wife.

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Taglines:

Behind the reflection is what you fear most

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Genres:

Horror | Thriller

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Official Sites:

Official site

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

27 July 2007 (USA)

Also Known As:

Shut In

Filming Locations:

Venice, Los Angeles, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$1,000,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Cut Glass Productions LLC

Technical Specs

Color:

Color

Did You Know?

Goofs

After Deborah takes a picture directly into the bathroom mirror, then falls backwards into the tub, she looks at the resulting shot and it shows her in mid-fall with the camera clearly pointed at the ceiling. Even if the mirror has magical or mystic powers, the digital camera would have reproduced the image presented to the lens, not the point of view of the mirror.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Jim Martin: You promised to give this one a chance.
Deborah Martin: I'm not promising you nothing.
Jim Martin: Come on Deb. fourteen houses so far, this cannot last forever.
Deborah Martin: I just know what I like. Just because you don't mind living in a piece of shit...
Ian Martin: I don't want to live in a piece of shit.
Deborah Martin: Well, thanks to mommy you won't have to.

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Connections

Referenced in Rewind This! (2013)

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Soundtracks

Alexa Knows
Written and Performed by Laura Proenza

User Reviews

Decent enough but still somewhat flawed

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

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

Rated R: Violence and Language.