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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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 Posted - 10/14/2008 : 11:13:03
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Mirrors
Wow, that Kiefer Sutherland -- he sure must owe lotsa money to have signed up for this dreck. He's not so much going through the motions as swimming through them in this smelly sewer.
I've willingly suspended my disbelief countless times in order to enter into the spirit of a film, no matter what the premise has been. But Alexandre Aja's remake of the 2003 Korean horror film Geoul sokeuro is predicated on such a contrived premise that my suspension totally snapped.
It's awful beyond words. Aja, one of the Splat Pack, disregards theme, ideas, story, characters, relationships - well, just about everything that might center this film - in favor of a series of effects which both stem from and lead to a preposterous premise.
The premise has promise. Lewis Carroll used it in a different form for Alice. And, I suppose, CS Lewis wrote a new wrinkle into the Wardrobe. But both of those are fantasy tales aimed at kids.
You'd have to be incapable of rational thought to accept what Aja throws at you. In defense of Korean, Chinese, and Japanese horror, the cultural references fully sustain the contemporary embellishments on myths of good and evil.
If this film could have been made during the Spanish Inquisition, it might have captured the fears buried in the collective unconscious. But we don't live in a unified society and cannot relate to the so-called evil referenced in this film.
Like most of the Splat Pack, Aja is essentially a hack, a jobbing director who has no cinematic fingerprints that mark his territory. It's not even that scary, if that's what floats yer boat. It's just stoo-pid.
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Salopian 
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 10/14/2008 : 11:48:40
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I thought that it was hilarious that they painted over all of the pictures in the house, rather than just get rid of them. And where did all that green paint come from? None of the walls seemed to be that colour.
Two aspects of the ending make no sense at all (spoilers): Why would a nun suddenly allow a demon into the world just to save three people? And Kiefer suddenly ending up in the mirrors, while aesthetically a nice touch, bears no relation to the rest of the reality of the situation. |
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randall
"I like to watch."
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Posted - 06/09/2009 : 20:28:10
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Wow, this one worked for me a lot better on a visceral level a la Friedkin's intro to the DVD of EXORCIST: "Turn the lights down. Turn the sound up." [And I might add, "Park the brain in valet section." Once one mirror turns on you, pal, they all will!]
Until the last reel, that is, when it devolved into a rather pedestrian bit of tick-tock. [The 24 influence?] The button at the very end, for me, was quite effective.
Anybody who tries to make empirical sense out of movies like this is swimming upstream, so best of luck and enjoy the struggle. I had a good popcorn-level time and appreciated the jolts which the premise made possible. Most of the considerable talent on display was below the line. |
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Mirrors
