Mirror, Mirror III: The Voyeur (1995)

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Excellent adaptation.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Blistering performances.

The third movie in the "Mirror Mirror" series marked the point where the franchise abandoned horror for soft-core porn. The movie has very little, if any, violence, and the demon that lived in the mirror in the previous two films never shows up. Instead we're treated to Billy Drago having sex almost continuously throughout the hour-and-a-half run-time.Is there anyone out there - anyone at all - who wants to see that? With his long, angular face and pleading eyes, Drago looks like a drug addled vampire. The IMDB description calls him a "young man", but he was already grey and pot-bellied in this movie.Perhaps they meant Ruffalo, who they probably should have cast as the lead - though one appearance in this series should have been enough for him. He does get one sex scene, which is a relief because it makes a break from seeing half-naked Billy Drago with his beady eyes and barely-there face pecking away at whatever soft-core actress was in this.Drago's weird appearance makes him a more convincing demon than the ones that appeared in the first two "Mirror Mirror" flicks. But the question of why the filmmakers thought we'd want to watch him on the job is perhaps better left unanswered.The plot of this entry in the series is something to do with an artist who may or may not move into a house with the haunted mirror the whole series of movies revolves around. Looking into the mirror, or being in the same room with it, apparently triggers flashbacks or visions of Hispanic drug dealers in some completely neutered would-be action movie sequences that don't generate anything but boredom. A lady who is killed by the drug dealers comes through the mirror and has sex with Drago.This set-up is repeated at least a few times and then the movie ends.I have reservations about even calling "Mirror Mirror 3" a movie. It feels more like the directors' (there are two, perhaps because the main one didn't know how to turn the camera on) audition tape for "The Red Shoe Diaries". This is not an audition they would have passed.

"Mirror, Mirror III: The Voyeur" follows an artist with a ghostly woman/ lover stalking him after he relocates to a mansion where a mysterious antique mirror is housed. She randomly appears to him and they have sex in front of the mirror, which bleeds whenever she kills someone. A subplot detailing her death at the hands of a drug dealer is intermixed.That's the best I have at describing the plot of the film, and even that may be totally off-base. The truth is, there is not much of a decipherable plot to this film, and I say that completely ingenuously. There really is no "story" to "Mirror, Mirror III"; it is more like a series of badly-shot "shock" images peppered within a Cinemax soft-core porno—no story, no intrigue, no subtlety. I don't really know what it was about, except that the majority of it was made up of tacky sex scenes and bad dialogue.The editing and special effects are horrendously sloppy; for example, there is a long, drawn-out opening montage featuring FX-enhanced images of a car speeding through Los Angeles that attempt to thrust a backstory at the audience before the exposition has even begun (there isn't any exposition after all I suppose, so it ultimately makes no difference). At moments, the filmmakers seem to attempting to channel David Lynch, but the result is embarrassingly bad. Billy Drago spends most of his time on screen moping around a bedroom when he's not having sex with Monique Parent on the bed while curtains flap around them in the wind. The only honest-to-God reason I finished the film was because Mark Ruffalo (who was also in an unconnected role in the previous sequel) was infectiously adorable in it, as well as the only actor to turn in a somewhat solid performance.Overall, "Mirror, Mirror III: The Voyeur" is an unequivocally bad film—like, really bad—and I rarely say that about a movie. It is some of the laziest filmmaking I've ever seen, and also a disgrace to the original "Mirror, Mirror," which, although no masterpiece, was a decent horror movie. Even the prior installment, which was bad for other reasons, was ten times more watchable than this. Literally one of the most dumbfounding experiences I've had watching a movie. Monique Parent spends virtually the entire film naked, so there's that, and Ruffalo also shows his body off at the end, serving as proof that he's always looked great. Other than that, there is no reason to watch this film—intellectually, visually, or otherwise. 2/10.

Okay, I have just finished watching this movie, and it is pure, unadulterated crap. But that is beside the point. It would be great if they had more of the soft core porn feel if THERE WERE MORE THAN TWO FEMALES IN THE MOVIE. Seriously. The blonde woman rarely does get in the spirit of the pornographic nature of this film. She gets naked twice. The other girl does it quite a bit. In flashbacks. OF THE SAME DAMN SCENE. This one doesn't suffer from SWIRLY CAM OF DOOM syndrome like Raven Dance did. But still.My main problem, however, is the blood is so ridiculously watered down. The classic "blood drips down the mirror" thing that happened in the first two was ridiculous. The water...err blood...didn't even drip down realistically, nor in impressive amounts like the first two (it also hurt that no female was getting near orgasmic seeing it, just some creepy middle aged man who keeps having sex with the same girl over and over and over-acting), seriously, I'd rather watch THE KNIGHT FROM THE STAINED GLASS WINDOW IN RAVEN DANCE star in a buddy cop comedy with Air Bud than watch this film again.All I can say is why David Naughtan? Why?

Monique Parent is an attractive woman but even attractive women can't hide a bad film with zero thrills and unerotic sex scenes. Parent has done much more steamier work than this pathetic excuse for a horror film. View at your own risk.