The Film
After being involved in a shooting while on duty, and dealing with a very difficult time in his marriage, Ben Carson is temporarily out of a job and out of his wife’s life. He moves in with his sister, Angela, played by Amy Smart. Carson takes a basic night watchmen job at a local condemned department store known as The Mayflower to try to help get his life back on track.
All is not as it seems at the dark, partially burnt down store, however. Carson notices the mirrors in the store are in pristine condition and he begins to see writing and images in the mirrors. It is also revealed that before being a department store, this building was home to psychiatric treatments and several murders in the early 1950s. Things get further strange when his sister suffers a violent death in her bathtub. As his shifts continue at the Mayflower, he begins to see more and more bizarre and paranormal things in these mirrors, which he at first attributes to the strong drugs he has been taking to help rid him of his alcohol dependency. Any attempts to destroy the mirrors prove useless, but they do offer him a name which Carson investigates and discovers that the name, Anna Esseker, is that of a former psychiatric patient who was formerly in this building. Plenty of horrific images, thrills, and a decent mystery story keep Mirrors interesting for its duration.
Mirrors Arrives On Blu-ray
The two disc special edition of Mirrors on Blu-ray is packed with quite a bit of extra content. Before detailing the extra content, I’d like to take a moment to talk about the video and audio presentation. Mirrors is presented in a gorgeous 1080p picture with 5.1 DTS-HD sound; being a recent film, you’d expect it to look and sound great, and it certainly does. Mirrors has the added benefit of having lots of disturbing images and eerie sounds that give the overall visual and aural presentation on this release a boost above a typical film.
For extras, there are several. They include:
-Digital Copy of the Film on Disc 2
-Theatrical and Unrated Versions of the film – The Unrated version includes, not surprisingly, extended scenes of disturbing images and strong violence.
-Anna Esseker: Hospital Footage – A five and half minute SD feature that is frankly pretty useless. It basically involves some footage with very little audio and shows scenes of a young girl taken to what is supposed to be the psychiatric hospital referred to in the film. The feature has that ‘old film’ look to it for added effect.
-Reflections: The Making of Mirrors Shockumentary – I believe this is the first ‘shockumentary’ I’ve ever seen (or heard of), but it’s done fairly well. The forty-eight minute SD feature includes several members of the cast and crew talking about everything from casting to production with plenty of behind the scenes and production footage shown.
-Behind The Mirror – An eighteen minute feature in SD that is basically a bunch of fluff. A ‘folklorist’ from a university, and some of the cast and crew talk about the significance and mystery of mirrors in religions and other areas of life.
-Animated Storyboard Sequence – This is a one minute feature where the bathtub scene is shown in basic drawn form. It too is pretty useless and uninteresting.
-Deleted/Alternate Scenes (Including Alternate Ending) – There are eight total scenes here, all in SD, totaling fifteen and a half minutes. The alternate ending is about four and a half minutes of that.
-BonusView – There are about twenty-five Picture-In-Picture features included here that give you more information on the making of certain scenes; makes for a great excuse to watch the film a second time.
Mirrors is an entertaining and interesting horror film that features all or at least most of the violence and uneasiness you’d hope for from the genre as well an intriguing mystery and thriller. It’s well worth a watch.