Mirrors 2

Now available on DVD and Blu-Ray

Cast:



Nick Stahl as Max



Emmanuelle Vaugier as Elizabeth



Christy Carlson Romano as Jenna



William Katt as Jack



Lawrence Turner as Keller



Directed by Victor Garcia

Review:

Quite the hubbub has been made among some of the Internet gossip sites in regard to Christy Carlson Romano’s appearance in Mirrors 2. Apparently, Romano was a goody-goody that frequently starred in family-friendly fare such as Kim Possible, Even Stevens, The Cutting Edge series and Joan of Arcadia.

So what’s the big deal? Romano has an extended nude scene that involves a shower, a soap-down rub down and multiple shots of her lovely naked body. Typical for any horror film where a scream queen is about to pay the price for such a dastardly transgression as taking a shower, but for it to be Kim Possible? All the better. [editor’s note: Pete, you perv!]

But there’s more to Mirrors 2 than just some washed-up kid actor that is so desperate for work she’s resorted to going near full-frontal for 5 minutes in a direct-to-DVD flick. Well, a little more.

Truth told, the best thing you will probably get out of Mirrors 2 is actually the nude scene. Yeah, there are some good bloody moments and some decent brutal killings but it is in the middle of a deluged storyline that along the way forgets that it is a horror movie. Plus, we are introduced to characters and situations that are left open-ended, so we are left wondering what the point was to it at all.

Nick Stahl (from Carnivale and Sin City) stars as a troubled security guard tasked with guarding a high-brow department store. But Nick has a bit of a history as he survived a car accident that claimed the life of his girlfriend and left him flat-lined. He came back but has had visions ever since.

Now, he is seeing visions of a woman in the mirrors of the department store – just about the same time as when some brutal killings begin happening.

We meet a handful of people in one scene, the next time we see them they are getting butchered by something that’s extremely pissed off in the mirror. While there is nothing wrong with this, we have no context or development of these people because we just saw them on camera – once.

Again it is the plot inconsistencies that make the film muddled, Stahl’s father played by William Katt is one of the major characters in the first half of the film and almost bites it by the mirror ghost at one point but half way through the film, he’s forgotten, not appearing again. Wait, why did the mirror ghost want to kill him when we find out the reason she went after the others? What happened to this great relationship between a caring father and son? All forgotten.

Maybe, that’s because the film moves from a typical horror film to some sort of murder thriller as we finally get the reasons why a supernatural entity is killing random people we don’t get to know until the end of the film. Of course, we also get no reason as to why this person has the ability to stalk people through mirrors only that “it happened.”

One thing I’ll say that Mirrors 2 has going for it – it looks freaking great. They definitely paid a great deal of money on the actual production of the film, the special effects and the overall set design because everything is pretty, clean and slick. On Blu-ray in high-definition it is even better showing off all the blood, gore and effects more brilliantly.

As for Romano, her part is basically two small scenes with her clothed and the extended shower scene (I’m not complaining), but nothing really to get in a huff over. What we should give a huff over is her horrible death acting. Maybe it is too many kid films and TV but she really needs some help portraying how to die. However, I have a feeling given Romano’s propensity for showing off what God and what the surgeons gave her, that horror fans will welcome her back in any upcoming blood baths that she may want to be in.