GL84 After moving into a new house, a woman and her family are confronted with a series of bizarre and increasingly more frightening visions that she finds is connected to a long-forgotten mystery involving the previous residents of the house.This was quite a decent if troubling effort. One of its' better tactics is the use of photographs for the mirror which amounts to some of the better scenes in here. Among the better ones is the first attempt as the flashing light distorts the husbands face into a demonic figure while a second figure is seen in the mirror, the same distortion attempts plague the second photographs while the final attempt manages to feature plenty of utterly creepy images on everyone in the photographs before throwing a rather impressive freak-out that comes out of nowhere for a pretty exciting scene. Other big scenes are based highly on the tactic of throwing frightening visuals around at the most unexpected times which includes scenes as the sequence with the old woman across the hall which gets quite frantic with the house search with all the blood found throughout while also focusing on those reality distortion that have been utilized throughout here as well as numerous scenes of rattling windows and shimmering light which is the best part going for the film. The other big positive here is the rather enjoyable back-story which is pretty creepy in its own right before getting to the gradual investigation with the notebook and the water-style filtering on the scene for a truly enjoyable set-piece for the scenes which is enough to help this one out against its damaging flaws. The film's biggest factor against it is the rather toned-down feeling that flows throughout here. The bore and brutality from the kills are so down-played from what their initially could've been considering the actions within which is all based on the toned-down feeling exhibited by the rest of the film. The main part of the storyline here furthers that toned down feeling as it feels more in line with typical Lifetime Channel fare by introducing such topics as her actively questioning whether or not she's insane by imaging everything around her or actually happening which is a common staple in such films. Likewise, this includes the themes of the middle section where she begins investigating the source of the flashing victims throughout, which goes along with the other flaws on display to hold this one down.Rated R: Violence and Language.

sol1218 ****SPOILERS*** What's obviously an updated re-make of the 1946 thriller "The Dark Mirror" with Olivia De Havilland & Lew Aryes the film "Dark Mirror" has to do with housewife and part time professional photographer Deb Martin, Lisa Vidal, who becomes so obsessed with a mirror in her new home that it drives her over the edge or deep end by the time the movie is over. The mirror somehow interacts with Ded's camera after she casually took a photo of it. It's then that everyone she photographs ends up disappearing off the face the earth!Things get really weird when Deb's mom Grace, Lupe Ontiveros, shows up unexpectedly at the house with all these crazy stories of it being possessed by the ghost of it's previous owner an artist who also together with his wife dropped completely out of sight. It's then that Dob's workaholic husband Jim, David Chisum,starts to worry about her in that she may have a few screws loose upstairs: It turns out that Deb's mom Grace has been dead for the last five years! We get to see Ded slowly lose it when everyone she photographs starts to get edited out of the movie. As if they were somehow swallowed up in an other plane of existence. Even the police are puzzled in what's going on with all those that disappeared leave a number of clues, like blood trails, to them being brutally murdered without their dead and mutilated bodies to confirm it!***SPOILERS*** It's in the last 15 minutes that we the audience as well as Deb finally get some kind of handle to what exactly is going on in the film. And it's Deb herself who's the key to it without her really knowing about it! That's until it's too late for her as well as Jim who let the whole thing, his wife Deb's mental breakdown, go on too far to the point that he became a victim of it.

hasosch This is an excellent horror movie, and I will tell you step by step, why. Although the sources of writer-director Pablo Proenza are unknown to me, the plot makes systematical use of what is called in logic "poly-contextural" elements. Examples are: The exchange relation between a sign and its object, especially a painting and the real, painted person, or the exchange relation between two persons, by which operation the identity relation of the individual is abolished. The possibility that one person can appear at the same time in more than one place - thereby abolishing the Aristotelian triad of individual, place and time. The idea that Death does not abolish the individuality of a person, although it may well abolish its body and the related idea that the will, but not the thinking, of a dead person can survive and therefore influence the lives of the living. "Poly-contextural" is also the idea that "ghosts" can be imprisoned in prismatic glass (windows) or in whole houses, so also the idea/motive of the "Haunted House" has "poly-contextural" roots.In systematically using such motives the horror movies of the new generation do a big quality jump over their ancestors. Not only a quantity jump - by using more and even complexer technical effects which, at the end, dissolve themselves, but by bringing out the deepest horror which mankind is possibly able to sense: the idea to stand before oneself, the doubling of personality, the non-difference between life and death, the reversibility of the path between the Here and the Beyond and so on. This is not Science-Fiction, but based on solid logical Cybernetics, developed mainly in the US since the 50ies.Congratulations to the director for this masterpiece! May he continue his way and become the ice-breaker for a real, qualitatively and not only quantitatively new generation of the horror film.

Seb Another reviewer praises this movie as being 'Polanski scary' but I'm not seeing the connection between a convicted paedophile and this leaden paced dud. The plot seems interesting enough to start with, a sour faced woman and her family move into a house which has some funny business going on with the mirrors. This goes absolutely nowhere though and the twists are only surprising in the sense that there's no lead up to them so when they're dropped into the story it has minimal impact. The film has a go at a few different ideas but doesn't really get stuck into a good ghost story, nor is it really a satisfying thriller.The best I can say is that it at least shows you the ending at the start saving you from having to watch the whole thing. I stuck on until the end hoping for something to make it all worthwhile but there really is nothing. I like slow spooky movies but this is just slow and badly put together with mediocre acting from all involved especially "grandma exposition" who pops up a few times to try to get the plot moving.