Released 8 Sep 2013 in Canada 3 Apr 2014 in USA
Director Mike Flanagan
Written by Mike Flanagan, Jeff Howard, Jeff Seidman
Based on a 2006 short
Synopsis
Kaylie Russell uses a promise that her brother and she made when they were children to destroy a mirror that they believe was the cause of their Mother and fathers death. Kaylie’s brother Tim was recently released form a mental institution. Kaylie intends to prove that a mirror is a hostile paranormal object that drives its owners to commit heinous crimes and suicides. That evening in the house proves both surreal and terrifying. Allowing Tim and Kaylie to relive the decaying of both their parents’ minds into madness. Was what they saw and believed real? Or was it what a child’s mind make them believe happened then.
Review
This paranormal /psychological thriller was very interesting with some very high points and kept its lows to a minimum. If you take the basic approach to this plot its sounds all too generically cliché. A family moves into a new home, they get a mysterious object in this case a very beautiful antique mirror. With this new object odd things start happening small stuff at first plants die and animals start acting up and eventually go missing. Till you start seeing things like people and other entities in the house. The adults start acting odd and they climax to a very Amityville/ shining like way. As I said very generic but this movie is anything but generic. It is and does all the things I just described but presents it in a very interesting way. The movie plays with the idea of memories and what we believe happens to what really happened. It is also presented in a very interesting way moving the timeline back and forth from the past to the present repeatedly until that even gets blurred. The entity in the mirror even manipulates the perceptive reality of the family in a cool new first person kind of way. Even though this is the same old same old this movie is actually very creative the editing was a huge win for the movie. The acting in the movie was ok not bad by any means but also no one had a break out performance in this. The score was unremarkable it did its job with suspense and breaks and jumps but don’t think it is iconic score at all. As far as a horror movie it has low in kills low in gore the jumps scares were not great and it wasn’t all that scary. To me it’s all about the story and the subject it is trying to look at that make this a win in the genre and the editing executed on every level.
Horror score Kill count 3/10
Kill creativity 3/10
Blood 1/10
Jump scares 5/10 (High Volume but not executed very well)
Plot/originality 8/10
Scary 2/10
Creepy 2/10
X Factor 0/10
Total 24/80 Average 3/10
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