Dark Mirror

The housewife and aspirant photographer Deborah Martin (Lisa Vidal) fells a strange sort of attraction by a house and convinces her husband Jim (David Chisum) to buy it. They move from Seattle with their son Ian (Joshua Pelegrin) and Deborah takes a photo of a mirror in the bathroom. Along the days, she discovers that her neighbor is snooping her family and a stranger is stalking her. She researches and finds that the house belonged to a painter that might have killed his wife. Sooner she realizes that an alternate world is affecting her life and the glasses of the house are protecting her family.

The above summary sounds crazy, incoherent or inconsistent? So congratulations to me since I have succeeded in describing the complete mess that this story is. "Dark Mirror" is an awful horror movie despite a couple of good reviews in IMDb (but at least two visibly fake from Users with only one review and giving a ten to this crap). My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Reflexo do Mal" ("Reflex of the Evil")

This movie feels like a made for tv movie and perhaps it was originally I am not sure.

The camera has that soft feel for a lot of the time and the script felt like a toned down made for tv type of movie too. That said the acting wasnt bad, the general story wasnt bad and overall while not what I would call scary at all it does a good job telling the story it wants to tell.

The ending was supposed to be a twist but I doubt you will be all that surprised. That said though it wasnt a bad ending to the movie even if you do see it coming in broad terms. Worth a watch but I wouldnt seek it out.

Another reviewer praises this movie as being 'Polanski scary' but I'm not seeing the connection between a convicted paedophile and this leaden paced dud.

The plot seems interesting enough to start with, a sour faced woman and her family move into a house which has some funny business going on with the mirrors. This goes absolutely nowhere though and the twists are only surprising in the sense that there's no lead up to them so when they're dropped into the story it has minimal impact. The film has a go at a few different ideas but doesn't really get stuck into a good ghost story, nor is it really a satisfying thriller.

The best I can say is that it at least shows you the ending at the start saving you from having to watch the whole thing. I stuck on until the end hoping for something to make it all worthwhile but there really is nothing. I like slow spooky movies but this is just slow and badly put together with mediocre acting from all involved especially "grandma exposition" who pops up a few times to try to get the plot moving.

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.

I really enjoyed Dark Mirror. It's not your typical scary movie, but that's what makes it so good. The story grips you right from the beginning and never allows you to catch your breath. The plot revolves around a photographer who, after moving into the perfect (and yet, creepy) old house, discovers that there are secrets hidden in the house's glass windows and mirrors that only her camera can reveal. The film moves at such a rapid pace and the suspense never lets up, so much so that I didn't foresee the very clever plot twist at the end of the film coming. A couple of the actors turn in campy performances, but given the spooky, off-putting world into which this film immediately transports us, they didn't bother me or seem to be out of place. Lisa Vidal shines in the lead role of Deborah, and director Pablo Proenza should be very proud of his work in steering this highly inventive film to its final, disturbing conclusion. I recommend this film not only because it's different than anything that I've seen recently, but it's very effective at scaring its audience. Just don't watch this one alone!