Dark Mirror (2007)
Studio: MPI Home Video/IFC Films
Release Date: November 3, 2009
Directed By: Pablo Proenza
Cast: Lisa Vidal, David Chisum, Christine Lakin, Joshua Pelegrin & Lupe Ontiveros
Review By: Annie Riordan

Having landed a plum new job, Jim Martin leaves rainy Seattle behind and relocates his wife Debbie and their young son Ian to Southern California. However, Debbie – a stay-at-home mom and hopeful professional photographer – doesn’t like any of the houses they’ve seen so far. Jim’s patience with her is obviously wearing thin when the family drives out to see yet another house in a suburb which looks to be swiftly making the transition from blue collar to ghetto. The house in question is ho-hum; a dingy, dirty little bungalow surrounded by a chain link fence, no different from any other crackhouse in da hood. But Debbie – impressed with the imported glass panels and the reclusive artist who once lived there – decides that this is the dream home she’s been holding out for, and the family moves in almost immediately.

But no house is perfect, and Debbie soon finds herself contending with two very annoying neighbors: an airheaded Barbie whose wardrobe seems to consist solely of Daisy Dukes and string bikinis, and an elderly Asian woman who spends her days staring at Debbie’s house from behind her own murky windows.

Oh yeah, and there’s also something wrong with the bathroom mirror. It reflects a door in the hallway that isn’t really there. When Debbie decides to take a photograph of the mirror, the flash seems to unleash a dark presence within the house. Soon, everyone photographed with Debbie’s camera turns up dead, but since they’re all vacuous, one dimensional assholes, you won’t really care. The deeper Debbie delves into the house’s dark past, the bloodier the present becomes. But is there really a vengeful spirit on the loose, or is Debbie just losing her mind?

If you’ve already seen Mirrors and Thir13en Ghosts (the 2001 version), then you’ve already seen this movie too. It’s every bit as convoluted, predictable and annoying as those films were and lacks a star name in the cast to even make it worth a recommendation. Not content to remain a psychological thriller, it tries to throw in a weak slasher subplot about three quarters of the way through. Throw in a viewing of I Know What You Did Last Summer and you are excused from watching this film for life.

Even the most newbie of horror fans – I dare say, even a braindead, comatose, vegatative horror fan – will be able to figure out what’s going on before the flick is even half over, and by then you’ll have discovered that there is no one to root for and nothing worth saving anywhere in this overplotted pile of loose strings and rejected scraps. I’d rather watch Thir13en Ghosts again, and that’s sayin’ something considering that movie is the cinematic equivalent of a violent facial tic.

Brutal As Hell Rating: 1 out of 5