DARK MIRROR

A woman awakes next to her sleeping son. She’s covered in blood. We’re then taken "3 months earlier" to a time where the lead-up to this scenario can be explained …

Jim (David Chisum) moves from Seattle to California with his job. His wife Deb (Lisa Vidal) chooses the house they are to live in with their son, Ian (Joshua Pelegrin). It’s an old place, its exterior not unlike the one Emily haunts in THE BEYOND.

Deb falls for the place and an offer is accepted. The family move in and all seems well to begin with.

But then, the cracks start to appear. One of Deb’s neighbours is a strange old woman with a grey pallor who is taken to staring at her from behind twitching curtains. On the other side there’s Tammy (Christine Lakin), a precocious young wannabe actress. She has an unbelievable body, and she knows it. Unfortunately for Deb, she’s convinced Jim knows it too.

That’s just the start of Deb’s problems. She’s struggling to find work in California as a photographer. Her secret smoking habit is becoming harder and harder to hide from her family. She’s worried about the increasingly quiet Ian fitting in to his new school. Her mother Grace (Lupe Ontiveros) turns up, reopening apparent old disagreements between them both.

Most disconcertingly of all, Deb starts seeing images of a hooded figure lurking in the shadows and backgrounds of mirrors in the house. She laughs them off at first, but begins to take them more seriously when people start going missing … a short while after their images have been caught by her camera …

Upon discussing her doubts with Grace, Deb and her mom decide to dig a little deeper into the history of the long-dormant house’s last owner, the famous painter Rupert Wells. He allegedly vanished under mysterious circumstances, along with his family. Rumour has it he claimed to have been possessed by a demon at the time …

As psychological thrillers go, DARK MIRROR manages to be proficiently made but also rather by-the-numbers for at least half of its 82-minute running time.

Director Pablo Proenza also co-writes, alongside Matthew Reynolds. While their screenplay does give in to convention on too many occasions (genre buffs will recognise many recycled ideas from thrillers of old – the revelation hidden beneath the painting, the drip-drip clues unearthed by Grace and Deb regarding Rupert’s fate, etc) and is guilty of some dialogue so contrived it seems designed to make festival audiences guffaw (all the talk of Feng Shui is particularly silly), Proenza’s direction is taut and admirably straight-faced. It helps keep events watchable regardless.

The real saviour of this piece though is Vidal.

Who’d have thought it? An actress best-known for her role in (too) long-running TV series "E.R.", and here she is showing real charisma and versatility as a concerned mother, faithful wife, cautious neighbour, beleaguered daughter, resilient jobseeker and much more. It’s a role of many facets, and at the centre of it is this ambiguously disturbed female character, the likes of which Roman Polanski used to love to film. Vidal copes with her demanding role well, breathing convincing warmth and depth into her character.

The film looks good, with ample consideration clearly having gone into many of its compositions. Despite its low budget feel, it manages to look a tad over-polished – a bit safe, in a Multiplex manner – but is slickly edited ensuring an unchallenging viewing.

It’s nice to see a horror film that toys with the notion of mirrors holding on to memories of things they’ve previously seen – it’s an underused conceit, the most immediate comparison that springs to mind being Uli Lommel’s video nasty THE BOGEYMAN.

To its credit, DARK MIRROR is often atmospheric and does build to a memorable final act which compensates some for the predictable path it’s taken in getting there. The final scenes offered a satisfying denouement, even if the film’s low budget visuals leading up to it (a couple of sub-J-Horror flash-edits and a crappy CGI storm) threatened to compromise the film along the way.

DARK MIRROR comes to UK DVD uncut courtesy of Arrow Film (not Arrow Video, so don’t expect any elaborate packaging).

The film is presented in anamorphic widescreen and looks generally good, if a little soft and over-saturated in contrast at times. Colours are fairly warm; depth and detail are there to be savoured.

English audio does a good job of impressing in both options of 2.0 and 5.1.

An animated main menu page gives way to a static scene-selection menu allowing access to the film via 12 chapters.

Extras begin with an honest, candid commentary track from Proenza. He’s a likeable chap, and his commitment to the film is in no doubt after listening to this.

Next we get an 8-minute behind-the-scenes featurette, offering plenty of worthy footage of the film’s shoot as well as welcome commentary from one of its producers. Beware though, this featurette is totally spoilerific!

An 83-second trailer does a good job of whetting the appetites of potential viewers.

The disc is defaulted to open with a trailer for THE SHRINE.

DARK MIRROR is no classic, then. But it’s a decent enough watch, so long as you know a lot of it has been seen before. I imagine those not so au fait with the horror genre will love it, as much of its convention will be new to them (long-suffering partners of horror fans, I’m thinking – the type who balk at the prospect of sitting through an Argento film but happily went to see THE WOMAN IN BLACK because ‘Harry Potter’ was in it).

For the more seasoned fan, the film comes marginally recommended, mainly for the standout performance of Vidal and a suggestion of better things to come from director Proenza.

Review by Stuart Willis