Mirrors

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Ben learns the (first) secret of the mirrors and gets a Foreshadowing of his own fate

You get a lot of suicide cases where people have slashed their own throats? Didn't think so.

Mirrors is a 2008 horror film directed by Alexandre Aja, and stars Kiefer Sutherland. The film was first titled Into the Mirror, but the name was later changed to Mirrors. Filming began on May 1, 2007, and it was released in American theaters on August 15, 2008.

The film was originally scripted as a straightforward remake of the 2003 South Korean horror film Into the Mirror, which is rated PG. However, once Aja was brought on board and read the script, he was dissatisfied with the particulars of the original film's story. He decided to retain the original film's basic idea involving mirrors, and to incorporate a few of its scenes, but otherwise crafted a new story and script for his version of the movie. Mirrors is the first Aja film to achieve an R rating without the need for scenes to be cut.

The movie follows Ben, a former police officer, as he takes an overnight security guard position in a burned-down department store. As might be expected, an evil force in the mirrors takes the form of your reflection, and whatever harm it imposes on itself happens to the real person. Now Ben has to figure out how to stop it before it kills his family, then him.

A direct-to-DVD sequel has been completed and is scheduled for release on October 19, 2010, apparently unrelated to the events of the first one. When Max, who is recovering from a traumatic accident, takes a job as a nighttime security guard, he begins to see visions of a young mysterious woman in the store's mirror.

Tropes used in Mirrors include:
  • Abandoned Hospital: What Mayflower was before it became a department store. Complete with rooms sealed in the basement where disturbing psychiatric experiments were carried out, and a massacre of the inmates which led to its closing.
  • And I Must Scream: The fates of all the mirror victims now trapped within them (and Ben).
  • A Fate Worse Than Death: Ben ends up trapped in a mirror world, seemingly unable to return, where nobody can sense him.
  • All Just a Dream: Ben experiences this several times in the burned-down department store. Most notably, he was set on fire for several seconds, then it all just went away and he was totally unharmed.
  • Another Dimension: And everything is backwards.
  • Attack of the Killer Whatever: The mirror demon, especially when it is yanked into the physical world.
  • Body Horror: All deaths the mirrors caused. Oh, and the nun/Esseker thing.
  • Creative Opening Credits: All the scenes of New York shown during the opening credits are depicted as mirror images constantly shifting, changing shape, joining, and splitting apart, with the text also appearing both backwards and forwards. This could be considered Foreshadowing of what happens to Ben at the end.
  • Cruel and Unusual Death: Everyone who died in this movie. Eesh.
  • Demonic Possession: Anna's original issue, which she must face again in order to free the souls of the trapped spirits. Is likely a nod to the original, now-outdated religious notion that people with mental disorders were possessed by demons. Only here, it's true.
  • Downer Ending: Ben is trapped in the mirror world.
  • Evil Twin: Everyone's reflection.
  • Fatal Family Photo: Played with. By the time Ben shows his family photo to Anna, we already know they are in grave danger; showing her the photo was meant to garner her sympathy so as to prevent their deaths. At first it doesn't seem to work, but eventually it does.
  • Genre Shift: Most of the movie is a horror film, plain and simple. However, the 15 minutes where Ben holds a nun at gunpoint, saying, "My family will not die today," then engaging in a gun/fistfight with the demon yanked from the mirror, seemed far more like a cross between 24 and Mortal Kombat. Also, much of the story which is not action or horror plays off as a cross between a mystery and a psychological thriller. (The latter is especially apparent when, apart from the scenes the viewer sees of Angela's death and Michael seeing the burning woman in the mirror, it isn't clear whether the supernatural events are real or all in Ben's head, and those of each of the night watchmen before him.)
  • Glasgow Grin: Angela's reflection kills Angela by giving her one of these WITH HER BARE HANDS.
  • Gory Discretion Shot: Invariably averted. We see everything. And because deaths always happen in front of a mirror, we see everything from different angles.
  • Grievous Harm with a Body: Oh those mirrors.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: In the alternate ending, Michael is saved because Ben encounters him in the water and pushes him back out to the real world. It is implied this might be why he ends up in the mirror world at the end, because he took his place.
    • Anna too, by agreeing to let the demon back into her in order to free all those trapped in the mirrors (and then destroy the demon, hopefully, with her death).
  • Jaw Breaker: One of the deaths.
  • Kill It with Fire: The department store was burned down in an attempt to defeat the evil in the mirrors, with the logic that fire is the only way to truly destroy a mirror. It doesn't work.
  • Madwoman In The Cellar: Anna, originally.
  • Magic Mirror: Please don't tell me you need this one explained to you.
  • Mirror Monster: Or this one.
  • Mirror Scare: Or this one. (It's even obligatory here because of the premise.)
  • Moment of Silence: Used very effectively for Ben's reaction to Angie's death. Appears again, oddly enough, near the end when all the mirrors shatter, with the only sound being either a sad orchestral piece or a haunting chorus.
  • Must Make Amends: Although it was the fault of the Mad Scientist psychiatrist, not her, Anna was well aware that the demon within her had escaped into the mirrors, and therefore once she learns that this has led to countless deaths, and might cause Ben to lose his family too, she agrees to return and absorb the demon back into her again. Helped along by her already being The Atoner (and having joined the church) for the things the demon made her do when she was possessed the first time.
  • Nuns Are Spooky: Taken to an extreme, after Anna is re-possessed.
  • Ominous Latin Chanting: During the opening credits. This and the effectively ominous, disturbing arrangement of the main theme itself, Isaac Albeniz's "Asturias", could be considered a Crowning Music of Awesome.
  • Only Sane Man: Nobody believes Ben. Angela gets killed because she didn't listen.
  • Paranoia Fuel: In-story, Ben's reaction to mirrors being everywhere around him, particularly during the breakdown scene where he tries to cover them all, is considered this by everyone else, especially his wife. Of course as the audience knows and his wife discovers, he's Properly Paranoid.
  • Shout-Out: In Michael's room, there is a poster of Mahou Sensei Negima and in Daisy's room, there is a poster of Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle. It raises some strange questions as to why a six-year old would be watching or reading heavy Ecchi...
  • Slashed Throat: This is how the mirrors kill Gary Lewis.
    • Averted when Amy rescues Michael from his reflection attempting to do this to him.
      • Switched in the Unrated cut where Amy prevents her mirror duplicate from doing this to Daisy.
  • Typecasting: You have to believe the writers did this to Kiefer Sutherland, given that the character he played basically turned into Jack Bauer in the final 20 minutes.
  • Up to Eleven: All the ways the mirrors kill or attempt to kill anyone.

The sequel contains examples of

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