Lena Headey is a British radiologist with a French boyfriend (Melvil Poupaud), who is spooked at a family dinner (her dad is American actor Richard Jenkins), by a mirror that suddenly and inexplicably breaks. The next day, driving home from work she spots someone who looks exactly, eerily like her! Following her to her apartment she sees photos of this woman with her own father. How can this be? Anyhoo, after leaving the apartment, Headey gets into a car accident and wakes up in a hospital bed. She is now plagued by nightmarish visions and the belief that her boyfriend isn’t really her boyfriend, that he’s acting like an entirely different entity. Ulrich Thomsen plays Headey’s psychiatrist.
A 2008 French-UK co-production from writer-director Sean Ellis, this is one of the dreariest, and most distressingly low-key horror films I’ve ever seen, along with “The Sin Eater”, “Lost Souls”, and “The Strangers” (although narratively the film is closer to “Mirrors” or its originator “Into the Mirror”). There’s nothing wrong with the cast on paper- Lena Headey made a solid Sarah Connor on TV, and Richard Jenkins is a solid character actor. Meanwhile, Ulrich Thomsen seems more ubiquitous these days than…well, Richard Jenkins (Thomsen sports a shaved head here, making it hard to spot him at first). But this is all so dreary, incoherent, and muted (making me miss Technicolour, actually), with the actors seemingly directed to speak barely above a whisper, making it hard to hear the dialogue. The dialogue, by the way, is sparse, but even if it weren’t, you could barely make any of it out.
We get far too many clichés as well, including the ‘An intruder is in my house…oh wait, it’s just my surprise party’ cliché, and the bane of my existence: The medicine cabinet mirror reflection ‘jump’ scare, though at least this one leads to a nifty shock moment. I also appreciated the jump scare involving a broken mirror. It’s dopey, but definitely one of the loudest jump scares of late.
With the muted look and muted performances, it proved a good time for me to catch a few winks. It’s not my favourite kind of film to begin with, more of a mind f**k film than a rip-off of “Mirrors” (there’s even a little “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” conspiratorial bent to it with the whole ‘he’s not my boyfriend’ bit), and the agonisingly slow pace and completely uneventful plot are the final nails in the coffin.
Headey looks stunning as always, although the film curiously misses at least two early chances for nudity, and yet later on gives us an extremely dark shot at her breasts, followed by a good butt shot in much better light. Her bath scene is well-shot but so careful not to reveal nudity that it draws attention to the fact, and we end up seeing half a nipple anyway. Yes, this really is important information, especially since there’s so little else to talk about.
Say what you will about “Into the Mirror” and “Mirrors”, but at least their plots aren’t as underdone and confusing as this. This one fails to coherently explain some pretty big details. We kinda know what’s happening, but unless I dozed off (not unlikely), I missed the how or why, and nothing really gets resolved in the end. Headey’s OK, the film stinks. **** SPOILER WARNING **** The best scene involves front and rear nudity from a blonde who then has a fist shoved down her throat by her doppelganger. It’s a bit bloody, and a fun scene, but like the rest of the film, features way too many quick edits. **** END SPOILER ****
OVERALL SUMMARY
Overall this is an awful, sleep-inducing and completely incoherent film. It’s just not enjoyable at all, taking forever to get basically nowhere of interest.
