The Mirror (2014)

Sadly Over-hyped

Brilliant and touching

Boring

Absolutely the worst movie.

This movie was a hodgepodge of so much good and bad in horror movies. It is just another found footage movie that has a storyline that makes little sense. Everything that happens in this movie to any member of the cast cannot be directly linked back to The Mirror. There is little to no back story as to why the Mirror is a haunted or paranormal item. While the acting was pretty good by the cast, decisions made by the characters in the movie were just borderline of incredulous! They call no one for help when one character starts sleepwalking and ends up on a balcony. Same character gets sudden blindness and they put him in bed, no emergency room. He turns up missing and they don't report it...the list just goes on and on!I thought the story moved along very slowly and got somewhat repetitive at points, too. The ending was not bad, but fell into the predictability of found footage films.

This is one of those movies that I had low expectations going in to. The plot has been done and done..and then overdone. However, this one (with an admittedly poor attempt at a new plot line) does very well. This is a found footage movie, which I never feel is quite advertised enough as is often a surprise. If you hate found footage, this will have the same things that you hate. While the movie is good, the footages existence is often explained by nonsensical plot devices to account for a camera being in a certain place at a certain time. If you can get past that typical failing in a found footage film, you will enjoy this. The tension in this movie is ever mounting. And it starts with three happy roommates having a good time, which makes the movie's plot progression enjoyable. Unlike other movies of this nature where the cameras only show up after bad events begin to occur, this footage begins when things are going dandy (which is well explained in the plot). And that makes the sudden turn, when it inevitably happens, all that more intense. And, as most horror fans can attest, I am rarely surprised in a film anymore. This one surprised me once, and that's really quite exciting. In terms of gore, this movie is a 2 out of 10. A point that I truly appreciate as fear and disgust are two decidedly different things. There are a lot of sound effects, but the director put all the money from the low budget into quality lost footage (the film quality is Paranormal Activity level - not the grainy, shaky kind often found in this sub-genre) rather than intense gore FX. I only gave this an 8 out of 10 because of the decidedly BAD decisions these college-age kids make near the end when the situation gets intense. As that sort of nonsensical behavior is expected in movies like this, I tend to not knock a review down for it. But this was excessive. I won't spoil it because the rest of the movie is good, but I will say (and you'll know when it is) that there was one scene where I literally screamed at the TV for these people to make better decisions..and then it happened several more times in an escalating downward spiral in the last 15 minutes. Fortunately, I enjoyed so much of my time leading up that that moment that I still don't regret giving it to this movie.And it might interest you to know that's it really IS based on a "true" story. See link: http://goo.gl/nIefO

.....maybe that this has to be the worse "scary", "horror" movie I've ever seen in my entire life. Not that it was made by some freshman film students at some wacky London college, but more likely made by some wannabe freshman film students studying at a wacky London college. The script, acting, direction, props, plot, theme -- everything is HORRIBLE, AWFUL!!!! How much lower can film sink? It seems like it started just in the past decade. I entirely regret wasting 90 minutes of my time watching this drivel. Not one good thing to say about it. Having said that, watch it win some kind of award. Crazy world we live in.

This is good ...The characters are fresh and likable (although the camera dude is a bit irritating), the premise is like a solid 19th century ghost story, and the pace is decent.... but what in H was the director/writer thinking?He forgot to cut off the phones!I couldn't believe it. From about 30m the only plausible course of action was to ring for help. First some relative, then maybe a doctor, and when the possessed guy went blind it had to be emergency services. Even at the very end no attempt at 999. Impossible for the audience to disregard.The only gesture was to have camera dude slumped on the floor finishing a call to someone unidentified. Or maybe the bit about the phone charger. Maybe the mirror could have interfered. Maybe some back story to explain a family falling out over the inheritance of the apartment. Maybe a threat to evict the girl and camera dude if they phoned. But nothing.I know it's not an original concept, but that has to be dealt with at the screenplay stage - "note to self: we are NOT lost in the woods". Given the quality of the rest, I'm stumped.Good story ruined through carelessness. Disappointing.