Nick Stahl plays a guy still tormented by the memory of a car crash that killed his girlfriend (i.e. He’s still seeing a shrink). His estranged dad William Katt tries to help him out of his misery by giving him a job as a security guard at a new department store that just so happens to be a new branch of the same department store that caused Kiefer Sutherland a whole lot of grief in the previous “Mirrors”. Unsurprisingly, it’s not long before Stahl starts seeing things in mirror reflections, including a young woman, and horrifying, bloody visions of death, that begin to turn up in the ‘real’ world too. After doing some digging, he finds out who the young woman is and tracks down her sister, played by Emmanuelle Vaugier. Vaugier doesn’t believe Stahl’s story of her sister haunting the glass of the department store, but for some reason, she teams up with him anyway to find out what the hell is goin’ on here. Christy Romano plays one of Katt’s underlings.
Neither “Into the Mirror” nor its American remake “Mirrors” were anything special, but both were reasonably watchable. This Direct-to-DVD sequel from director Victor Garcia keeps up the trend of watchable, but hardly inspiring films. The first thing that impresses with this film is the excellent Lorenzo Senatore (“Return to the House on Haunted Hill”, “Copperhead”) cinematography, but the virtually identical plot setup, does not impress. But it all looks so crisp-looking, and has terrific lighting (great use of shadow), and the opening scene is nicely bloody and nasty. In fact, the gore here is quite fun, including a terrific, bloody decapitation and a revolting, wince-inducing sliced heel (followed by a rather graphic hari-kari).
Getting back to the visuals, I also really liked the play on mirror reflections with a guy in an elevator seeing several mirror reflections, and only one is an evil one. So it looks great and is nice and bloody, two things that immediately ingratiate a film to me. The cast is interesting, too. Nick Stahl, who has been cast as villains a fair bit lately, is a really underrated actor. He’s well-cast and genuinely good here. William Katt, best known as the star of the completely awesome “Greatest American Hero” plays a perfectly fine schmuck, but his Pat Rafter-inspired hairdo is the worst hairdo I’ve seen since…oh, wait, he’s the guy who had that awful perm in the 80s, isn’t he? Never mind. Emmanuelle Vaugier is hot but the relationship between her and Stahl is way too rushed due to her late introduction into the film. She trusts him way too easily.
I think the main thing that irks me about this concept is that when you think about it, it plays like one big, long mirror cabinet ‘boo!’ scene. The mirror cabinet ‘boo!’ scene is my most hated movie cliché of all-time. So when you add that to the fact that this is essentially the same film as before, except that Stahl isn’t an ex-cop, the film never quite impresses. The script by Matt Venne is lazy as hell, to be honest (cute reference to South Korean folklore and superstitions, though). Christy Romano impresses, however, in her shower scene, offering up perhaps the most perfect breasts I’ve ever seen. Also, the mystery is obvious from about the ten minute mark, which is a big problem. Awful CGI too, but thankfully it’s sparingly used.
OVERALL SUMMARY
It lacks originality, but overall, isn’t any worse than the earlier films. So if you’re a fan of the concept, you should be entertained by this. Great nude scene, too.
