Honestly, I think we’re in a good time for horror movies these days. There are a number of talented directors who specialize in the genre. Directors like Robert Eggers and Ari Aster are finding new ways to provide a good scare, often in unconventional ways. But in the realm of more traditional scares, there’s always Mike Flanagan. He’s up there with James Wan in terms of creating great tension from what would perhaps otherwise be very run-of-the-mill horror films.
I mean, one of Flanagan’s first, Oculus, is about a cursed mirror. It would be really easy to screw that concept up.
Tim Russell (Brenton Thwaites) is turning 21 and may be getting out of the mental asylum he’s been in for years after he perhaps murdered his father Alan (Rory Cochrane). However, he’s finally been judged mentally sound enough to get out, and he’s being picked up by his older sister Kaylie (Karen Gillan). Kaylie is convinced that the tragedy that cost both the Russells their parents was caused by an antique mirror that she has managed to secure, along with their childhood home. Tim believes he had a psychotic episode and there’s a rational explanation involving his father’s infidelity and his mother’s (Katee Sackhoff) own mental breakdown. Kaylie believes if they can just get some evidence that the mirror is more than it appears to be, she can exonerate Tim of the crime she is certain he didn’t commit.
That’s a good set-up, and for the first half of the movie, it does play with the idea that Tim is just as likely to be right as Kaylie. However, as much as that could lead to an interesting psychological drama, this is a horror movie, so of course the mirror is cursed. The other option is one or both of the Russell siblings is some sort of unreliable narrator. That in and of itself could make for a good movie, especially in the hands of the right director and Flanagan probably could, but c’mon. The creepy mirror has to be cursed or something, and while the mirror itself is just a mirror, it does seem to have the ability to alter people’s perceptions and what they can see and hear around them. Houseplants tend to wither and die in its presence, and every past incident that Kaylie looked up before she decided to try and catch the mirror’s activities on tape showed pets who disappeared long before any humans turned up dead, including their own childhood dog. The mirror has been around for decades if not centuries. Can Tim and Kaylie outsmart something that can control what they see and hear?
I knew Flanagan was good with creepy stuff, and this sort of movie really works. On the surface, a cursed mirror sounds like a fairly dumb idea, even for a horror movie. Short of having evil reflections come out–and that does perhaps happen–what can a mirror even do? But the way that Flanagan goes about doing what he does is through slow burn tension. Kaylie, for one, suspects the mirror from the start, so she tends to be overcautious around it, especially when alone. That means she may be seeing things well before she gets the mirror back to her house. Plus, the way the mirror plays with perceptions means neither sibling can be 100% certain what’s happening, where checking video playback may tell the truth, but truths they don’t remember.
If anything, the movie gets a little too hectic in execution as it draws to a close. The movie skips back and forth between the present and the siblings’ childhood to show what happened with their parents, and while Tim may think he was guilty, how can he know anything for certain after years of well-meaning therapy? As for Kaylie, she never got that herself, so she might likewise not have the best recollection of past events as her obsession with the mirror could lead her down some dark paths of her own. But with the busy last few minutes, the effect will either work for a viewer or it won’t. It mostly worked for me, but the slowly, steady pace that built the tension in the first two thirds or so of the movie is long gone by then, leaving the ending a bit less effective than it otherwise would have been.
Grade: B+
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