And that’s the problem.  THE WOLFMAN needs to be complicated.  There needs to be torment behind those eyes in order for the audience to fear the full moon as much as Talbot does should.  Yet this iteration has no such concerns.  In fact, it’s not so much a creature feature as it is a zombie film.  Johnston and company lurch mindlessly from one obvious plot point to the next as though the whole film were operating on muscle memory and the vague knowledge that at one point in its life it had a higher purpose.  And low the purpose fell, the sets and makeup remained, so all involved went through the motions to deliver a horror movie that is entertaining in spurts but largely forgettable.

Universal’s resurrection of its classic monster is riddled with obvious holes in which to insert blame, but its troubled production is hardly the excuse here.  Even if original director Mark Romanek had stayed on board, audiences would still have Benecio Del Toro, who is about as energetic as a pamphlet on lycanthropy.  It’s astounding how uninvolved his performance is considering his love for the 1941 WOLF MAN is what got the project up and running in the first place.  He exerts zero charisma throughout his non-wolf sequences, in turn giving the audience zero emotional interest in seeing him overcome the monstrous Gypsy curse.

This version of Lawrence Talbot doesn’t want to be a werewolf, obviously, but Del Toro’s level of inner turmoil is on par with getting into a fender bender when late for a meeting.  We should be feeling for this man, we should fear his actions when he succumbs to the wolf, but considering the whole ordeal is expressed as little more than an inconvenience for Talbot, there’s never any gravity attached to his actions.

It’s all set off by a listless chain of events that sublimate the anguish of Talbot for buckets of blood and bodily dismemberment.  And for those who are only interested in seeing a few sequences that give Platinum Dunes’ productions a run for their money, that’s okay.  I’m sure there are plenty of people that will be willing to forgive hollow performances and rushed editing (no doubt spurred along by studio intervention) in exchange for some genuinely badass moments of arterial spray, but even a cynic like me thinks most genuine horror fans aren’t so superficially pleased.

However, those who expect pesky things like character development and thrills that aren’t predicated by a clashing orchestra or a barking dog — if I ever see THE WOLFMAN again, it’ll be to count just how many jump scares it foolishly employs; I might need a calculator — will come away sated but not satisfied.  It’s not a dreadful experience, mind you.  The production design is a treat, particularly during the asylum sequence, Hugo Weaving as the detective investigating Talbot is a refreshing antidote to the infectious lethargy that is Del Toro, and even the dreaded CGI transformations are adequately convincing.  But once it’s all said and done, once you’ve carried the one on how many loud jolts Johsnton tries to throw at the audience (his ideal candidate must not go to horror movies often) versus how great it is to see practical make-up work from Rick Baker again, THE WOLFMAN about breaks even.

But breaking even just isn’t good enough, now is it?  Part of me wishes it at least committed to one side or the other, that it would either be a complete disaster or an underdog triumph.  But it’s neither.  THE WOLFMAN is just there, lurking in the shadows like its eponymous creature, waiting not to convert, but to occupy your time with a bit of “Have you ever seen Victorian England this gory?” logic.  At least the breathless, blood-lubricated pace means the run time races by.

Written and Directed by D. Kerry Prior, 2009

There are two big obstacles Prior fails to overcome.  The first is that the film clocks in at nearly two hours long but lacks enough substance to sustain energy throughout its run time; but again, editing can fix that right up.  The second obstacle can’t be saved in post-production, however.  Chris Wylde is perpetually annoying throughout the entire film, cramping what is an otherwise welcome spin on buddy comedies.  Maybe I’m just not a fan of Wylde’s, but it felt like watching a movie with one of the McPoyles from “IT’S ALWAYS SUNNY” as a lead character, and if you know the McPoyles, you know just how skeevy that prospect is.

The rest of the actors help compensate, however, and the script does have a blast with its special breed of zombism, but at the length THE REVENANT currently runs, most of it is too little, too late.

SCOURGE begins in the late 19th century as a parasitic monster is terrorizing a small Canadian town. The creature is soon trapped by mysterious religious types in a jug of wine (obviously) in the basement of a CGI church. Over a hundred years later the CGI church is destroyed by CGI fire and, as a result, the parasite is set free into a fireman. The creature has a suspiciously similar effect on its hosts as the alien in SLITHER – it causes a hell of an appetite. However, instead of raw meat, the SCOURGE craves dairy products (is mayonnaise a dairy product?), and instead of it being an ongoing theme, it is (inexplicably) only the first victim that experiences this symptom.

In the hierarchy of evil parasitic worm-like tentacled monsters, the SCOURGE is pretty low on the ladder. Other than killing its former hosts (most of the time) the creature is rather innocuous: it doesn’t pose a threat to multiply, it can’t travel long distances outside of it host, and it’s powerless when placed in an alcoholic beverage. Throw the host in a beer vat and problem solved. I only wish the budget allowed for such extravagant sets.

Somehow, despite rarely making sense and featuring both the use of household cordless phones as cell phones and the trite search-through-the-town-archives-on-microfiche scene, SCOURGE amounts to something greater than a sum of its parts. The two leads (Nic Rhind and Robyn Ledoux) have genuine chemistry that livens up the scenes they share, and as a result, the movie is elevated as a whole. Also, there are two or three genuine laughs, a skateboarding scene, and special effects that are at least par with something like AVATAR.

Allow me to stress this: SCOURGE is not a well-made film. It is written and directed by the guy who made SASQUATCH and the plot mostly consists of blatant rip offs of better films. Regardless, there is a sincerity about it that suggests a nostalgia that camouflages its transgressions in a way a darker or more cynical film couldn’t muster. If you have a few beers hanging around and a couple friends on the way over, you could do much worse. Rhonda Shear most definitely would approve.

If you were hoping for THE CONDUIT’s story to be interesting, you’re going to be disappointed. An alien race known as The Drudge have invaded the earth and you are part of Trust, a government agency that is tracking the terrorist Prometheus as he has some connection to aliens. Prometheus has stolen the ASE (All-Seeing Eye, yes that’s what it means), an artifact that is connected to the Drudge. After you retrieve the ASE, Mr. Adams (head of Trust) declares you useless and decides to turn on you, which in turn makes you join Prometheus who offers you safe haven and more importantly, answers.

The plot is incredibly muddled and full of holes. For example, at the end of about every other level Mr. Adams gives you the chance to join him and help restore the country to glory. It doesn’t make sense as everything was going fine when you were a part of the organization and the reasons for him deciding you are useless are just as unclear. The ending is anti-climatic and was written in such a way that a sequel could easily be penned.

A recurring theme is conspiracy and evil government organizations, which is why you have the ASE. Along with being a rhetorical device that reveals the unseen in terms of knowledge and plot, it does the same thing with gameplay. When you come across hidden doors or puzzle pieces your ASE will pulsate and make a noise through the remote, when you locate the beacon you are then forced to solve an elementary school level puzzle (the animated SEGA logo inadvertently tells you how to solve ALL the puzzles in the game) to either proceed with the game or reveal a hidden weapon cache. The ASE is the most interesting component in the entire game and is severely under-used.

The controls for THE CONDUIT are great yet tedious.   It took twenty to thirty minutes of trial and error to find exactly what worked for me and I gave in when the controls were at last usable. Practically every single thing can be calibrated or adjusted to fit how you want to play. It may sound like a complaint that it took me a while to set it where I want but it’s definitely better to have this many settings over default controls that cannot be calibrated at all. When you do find what fits you, it becomes incredibly fluid. Grenades go exactly where your reticule is showing and melee seems just as fluid but be wary as when you thrust with the remote and melee it off-centers your aim. It’s a realistic feature that will force you a second or two of readjusting yourself if you want to shoot something.

THE CONDUIT is a game that can go from pretty fun to smashing your controller on the ground in a heartbeat. It’s not superior A.I. that is the cause of such distress nor is it precision aiming from enemies. No, the cause of your frustration will stem from the conduits; they are the re-spawn points that if not promptly destroyed will make your life hell. While one or two is more than manageable, at random times there will be a gauntlet of enemies guarding four or five conduits off-screen that you will have to sprint towards and destroy. It’s as difficult as it sounds and with scare checkpoints at large-scale battles it enhances the frustration.

Seemingly unfair difficulty aside, THE CONDUIT offers a pretty good gaming experience albeit a generic one. The enemies seem to be ripped right out of HALO, including the sounds and designs of some weapons. Perhaps it’s an homage to the game that started the console first-person shooter but that still isn’t enough to ignore the plagiarism.

Returning to the A.I, however; It’s all actually very good. Several times I have seen enemies take cover and wait until I reload to peek out and charge towards me. It’s not the best A.I I’ve seen in a game, but it definitely rivals most of what is on the market right now.

When the enemies don’t feel like they were copied from some other franchise, they feel like enemies you’ve killed a million times before. When not killing Drudge you will be killing generic suit-wearing government operatives with guns and armor-wearing government operatives with guns. Your arsenal consists of weapons just as uninspired and bland. The game doesn’t offer anything new in terms of blowing the hell out of things. Not everything can be as coveted as the Gravity Gun but every weapon is ordinary not to mention that all of the Drudge weapons are just more powerful versions than the human weapons in the game.

Even if nothing stands out or is unique, the maps, enemies, and everything else looks good. It’s not the best looking one out there, but it definitely ranks as one of the better looking games for the console.  The custom built Quantum3 engine is very impressive as well. I never noticed a single glitch or experienced any lag during the single player campaign. It’s an engine that I can see being used for several years by other companies interested in crafting their own first person shooter.

One thing that really helps pull THE CONDUIT back up on its feet is the multiplayer aspect. With thirteen different modes with seven different maps to choose from, out of the box there is quite a lot to play around with. Multiplayer offers a max of twelve different players at a time (although it was originally announced there would be sixteen max players.)

THE CONDUIT also makes use of the Wii Speak accessory (the first third party game to do so.) There is also a much more refined way to save Friend Codes and keep track of fellow gamers. The multiplayer aspect is incredibly easy to just jump into and should provide a longer and more enjoyable experience than the single player campaign.

The unfortunate truth to THE CONDUIT is that if this were made for PC and not Wii, it would be lauded as repetitive and at times overly difficult. Since this is a benchmark game ‘for the Wii’ it should be hailed as creating a great controller setup, accessible multiplayer and as a standard that future first-person shooter games on the Wii should follow.

While I have given out a fair amount of insults this review, I want to point out that it The Conduit gets all of the important things right. It is most certainly devoid of any bells and whistles that make a franchise great but the game isn’t broken, it’s just not polished. There is a good game at the core and I can easily see several sequels or spin-offs using this technology become the awe inspiring franchise shooter the Wii really needs at this point. It’s worth buying but not worth fifty dollars. If you are drooling for it, you may be disappointed with the shortcomings. If you wait until this reaches the bargain price of twenty or thirty, you should have no regrets.

It’s no secret that I am partial to Thai horror.   Because the US has no counterpart to it, I envy the genuine superstition for the afterlife found in Thai culture.  We have no nation spanning fears of spirits, which is precisely why American horror pales in the ghost department to that of the Asian rim.  Sure, we can do our slashers and our monsters with the best of them as that’s all guttural, but we’re a spiritually incongruous nation and our cinema is lacking for it.

When it comes to Thai horror no one has more enthusiasm for the fears of the afterlife than Sopon Sukdapisit, who wrote the two biggest horror films to come out of the nation to date: SHUTTER and ALONE, the latter of which is arguably the most successful as well.  COMING SOON marks the first time Sukdapisit takes on both scripting and directing duties, proving off the bat up to the task with one of the most gripping openers I’ve seen in recent memory.

A little girl awakens on a heavily soiled mattress in a dank room.  Startled by the dead body laying next to her, the girl hides in the corner as the door slides open and an hysterical corpse of an old woman brandishing a knife best suited for use in a fish market enters the room, searching its shadows for the little girl all the while dragging a hobbled foot behind her.  The girl can’t hide forever and soon the crazy old lady forces her to the dinner table where her “brothers and sisters” paw at bowls of rice unable to see thanks to bloody eyelids with no eyes to cover.

Meanwhile a band of parents are searching the abandoned house, eventually coming upon the old woman’s room.  All is too late.  The little girl has joined her “brothers and sisters” and the parents are left with a roomful of eyeless children.  While the mothers sob uncontrollably the fathers string up the psychotic old woman, set to hang her burned and nearly hairless body from the rafters.

Hell of an opener.  If only things stayed that way.

That opener is actually a movie characters within COMING SOON are watching.  It is a rough cut of “The Revengeful Woman” and the director is screening it to see how it plays.  As you’d expect at this point it doesn’t take long before those who watched the footage start to see the hanging woman outside of the silver screen.  Thus the real plot of COMING SOON emerges as we follow Shane (which sounds an awful lot like Ted when spoken in its native language), a projectionist at the theater.  He’s a boring character played by an uncharismatic (and not particularly talented) actor, but save for a few side folk is our proxy.

He’s stuck with the catch 22 of trying to get his life together while also trying to pay off a drug dealer he owes money to by helping pirate “The Revengeful Woman” before it releases.  The only problem is that his partner in crime goes missing during the late night camcorder’ing of the print.  When Shane tries to track him down the mystery (and eventual truth) of the movie’s power over people unfolds.

Sadly the movie within the movie is far more interesting to watch than what we’re given.  Segments of it are shown throughout, jacking the tension every time, which is much to the detriment of COMING SOON.  “The Revengeful Woman” looks like it has elaborate production design to it, solid cinematography and heartfelt acting.  COMING SOON, on the other hand, looks like PHANTOM OF THE MEGAPLEX by comparison.  There’s no style whatsoever to it and the sets are bland and interchangeable.  Where the fake movie has a full bodied score, the real movie has the lofty, unoriginal score most other movies use for their fake portions.

The only thing COMING SOON has going for it after that opener is the hanged woman.  Sopon Sukdapisit has abandoned the typical look of the white skin/black hair Yūrei and gone with an elderly gal owing parts of her aesthetic to Freddy Krueger.  She’s a freaky one for sure and pops up every where in the movie, especially when the theater starts hanging up massive posters for “The Revengeful Woman” all over the place.

If Sukdapisit had maintained the same level of quality as he did with his fake movie in his real movie, there would be little to complain about.  The script has several solid ideas to it that would be far less silly if the main actor were a tad more passionate.  The drama misses the mark, setting up a new, though not at all unpredictable, twist on the curse plot line with jokes instead of appreciable nods.  Because of this I’d wager COMING SOON will, internationally, never be as acclaimed as SHUTTER or ALONE.

Funny bits aside though, it has its share of creepy moments.  I’d be withholding if I did not admit that as I write this very review in a pitch black room I have fleeting glimpses of that club footed, burned, stringy haired old lady.  The triumph of the make up department isn’t enough to make up for a lopsided entry, though.  The bulk of the movie is too unimpressive to take it very far beyond the bar set in its opening sequence, which is a shame, and much of its plot drivers are overly familiar at this point.  If “The Revengeful Woman” had been 90 minutes instead of a mere 15, Sopon Sukdapisit would have another hit on his hands.  Unfortunately that’s not the feature he made.  COMING SOON is likely to settle for big success only in its native Thailand, where the cultural fascination with the afterlife helps get past the lack of life on screen.

TIMBER FALLS is an overall decent City Folk Shouldn’t Go Hiking flick with the potential to have been better were it not bookended by arguably the most over exposed horror set-up there is.  An attractive couple chipper enough to take a weekend long hike in the hills of West Virginia are ultimately kidnapped by a fugly hillbilly, only to have the wife escape and run into a park ranger, who is of course kin to the fuglerton.  Thus the cycle of torture and imprisonment begins again.

The problem inherent to a plot like this is not that it has been done to death, rather that the filmmakers think their audience must be complete fucking morons.  I’m not sure who Daniel Kay thought he was writing this movie for or who Tony Giglio thought he was making this movie for, but the obvious answer should have been you and I and not Them.  We’ve seen every backwoods battle flick under the sun, which is why we will see another Straight-to-DVD one.  They, whoever they are, have not and are not about to start with the no names attached TIMBER FALLS.  That being the case, for the love of all that is Chainsaw, do not wait 20 minutes into the movie to sock us with your limp plot twist that the wood folk our city heroes bumped into are also all in on the plot.  We saw that coming 30 minutes ago.

That major annoyance aside, should one have the patience to sit through 20 odd minutes of regurgitated foundation (albeit with improved landscaping), the middle portion of TIMBER FALLS reveals a few interesting wares others of its ilk lack.  The family has a twinge more unhinged agenda than the standard, “We’re inbreds so we need your genetically unpolluted womb(s)” plot.  Oh, they still want to make a baby, but they want Mike and Sheryl to do the copulating after bestowing upon them God’s marital blessings in a bizarre underground wedding ceremony.  Secondly, the star of the show is not the damsel Sheryl (Brianna Brown) rather the man of the hour Mike (Josh Randall).  All too often it is the final girl show as far as these outings are concerned.  It is a relief to see a script that offers up a man who is not dispatched in the initial chase, is realistically enraged after discovering his girlfriend has gone missing, and that actually brought a gun on their weekend excursion.  Naturally, Sheryl makes him throw away the bullets within the first 20 minutes, but at least Mike isn’t a pussy, right?

The head of the family is played by Nick Searcy, who pulls off the the patriarch of the religious nutballs well enough, but it is Beth Broderick who deserves the talking points along side Josh Randall.  Yes, she who played Zelda on “SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH” is a psychotic hill woman with a rocky womb hell bent on raising a healthy baby born in wedlock.  Kudos, casting department, wouldn’t have called that one myself.  Despite a filmography that lists a few low budget horror flicks and a pretty face, Brianna Brown never nails down all that encompasses being a scream queen, but that’s okay because Josh Randall (over?) compensates with his fuck ‘em all attitude and ridiculously jacked upper torso.

The film is about 15 minutes too long, which is odd considering the editor on task has no experience with transitions.  One shot Mike and Sheryl are walking up a crowded trail, the next they’re laying in a bed of moss and Sheryl’s bra is almost off.  I’m curious to know if the in between just never went in front of the camera or if it was cut for adding to the already bloated length.

Things are kept relatively lively, though, thanks to two moonshine brewing mountain men and a few park rangers not involved in the baby swindling plot.  All of the threads converge in an unexpected blood bath, which is a nice distraction considering the rest of the movie is nothing revolutionary.

QUARANTINE is nothing to me but a surrogate for everything wrong with Hollywood horror.  Production began on it before [REC] had even left post-production in its native Spain, which may just be a world record for fastest Hollywood remake.  Despite [REC] becoming the festival hit of 2007 and 2008, proving that the original film in its original state was an undeniable success, here we stand not twelve months later.  In the United States [REC] has yet to receive any commercial setting, be it limited theatrical run or a bare bones DVD.  Instead the stakeholders have given us an inferior American remake equipped with inferior performances under the eye of an inferior director, yet conversely boasts an astonishing superiority in the field of recreating to the tiniest detail every major set piece from its Spanish progenitor.

Thus I disclose my biased position in this review.  I might be in the position to call QUARANTINE a good movie were I able to shake the indelible memories of [REC].  That just taint the case, however, especially given John Dowdle’s slavish attention to detail in recreating the set pieces, the camera’s point of view therein and the script’s jolt’s throughout.  There are a few minor differences, mind you, but in no capacity can anything in this Screen Gems produced cash-grab be considered an improvement.

In fact, every addition to QUARANTINE over [REC] is a concession at the expense of audience enjoyment.  As should be expected from America, global leader of a rising obesity epidemic, the only original elements brought to the table are ones of bloat.  Bloated length, bloated script, bloated explanations.  Expansions where none was needed that do little but bog down the experience.  And since I’ve seen [REC], I’ve experienced QUARANTINE.  Maybe for the uninitiated watching this will be as delightfully frightful as watching the original, but that was not the case for me.  The last time I checked my watch this often I was sitting naked in an exam room waiting for the doctor.  Come to think of it, QUARANTINE had as much entertainment to offer me as that office did.  Or, more accurately, it did not.  I may actually take something away from reading year old issues of HIGHLIGHTS, I took nothing from QUARANTINE.

If you’ve seen [REC], rest sound knowing all your assumptions of QUARANTINE are true.  If you’ve not, which is probably the case, trust in my judgment and wait until [REC] is available on DVD.  This American schtick is not worth a trip to the theater.  It is rife with hysterics, hiding everything that should be shown and showing everything best held hidden.  Jennifer Carpenter plays a reporter shadowing a pair of firefighters for her late night news show.  The crew is called to an apartment building where a screaming woman refuses to leave her apartment.  Yadda, yadda, yadda infection causes extreme aggression yadda, yadda, yadda, the apartment’s residents and civil responders are quarantined inside the building.

That is all you the preparation you need.  There is not much to this script or its characters.  QUARANTINE does draw the non-horror bits out a bit more, attempting to flesh out relationships between the trapped individuals, but in my book it just gets in the way.  As does the casting of familiar faces like Carpenter, Jay Hernandez, Johnathon Schaech, and Greg Germann.  Where [REC] either bucked formula or rocketed through it faster than it took to register, QUARANTINE idles and accommodates.

This isn’t very professional, but to be honest, I don’t know what else to say.  QUARANTINE could be great, but I can’t make that call.  I’ve already seen it done better by more deserving individuals.  I can’t recommend it because I know better exists.  I can’t even distinguish it without comparing it to [REC].  If a first-person POV tale of a dozen people hunkered down with ravenous, infection spreading humans sounds like fun to you – which it is – hold out for [REC].  QUARANTINE is serviceable, but is bottom shelf compared to the alternative.  Pass this joint and wait for the good stuff to make its rounds.

Looking into mirrors we tend to only see our flaws reflected back.  Not me of course.  I am a fucking Adonis, but I understand the effect self inspection has on normal people.  How appropriate, then, that when we all look into MIRRORS we see nothing but flaws.  Except this time they aren’t (y)our flaws, they’re Alexandre Aja’s.  And I must confess, it is quite annoying to do nothing but stare at other people’s flaws for near two hours.  At least the audience can walk outside and go jogging or drop and do a few push ups.  No director’s cut is going to salvage this junior slump.

Which is a shame.  Not just because I once called Aja the future of horror (yeah, yeah, we all say silly stuff when we’re young) and I need an out to cover that mistake.  Despite all its misgivings, an easy 25+ minutes of bloated length, stale performances, despite all that, there are times one must remind themselves they are watching a movie about mirrors that kill people.  I have a ton of suggestions for how such a premise could be improved, however, I posit this: Was anyone ever going to take a movie about killer mirrors seriously?

Even with any hypothetical improvements a goofy ass premise remains.  It doesn’t help that Keifer Sutherland plays the lead with same frenetic fervor as his intrinsically tied USA saving, terrorist decimating alter personality.  Hard enough as it is to take a movie about homicidal two dimensional planar objects earnestly.  MIRRORS is done no favors by Jack Bauer running around with a gun screaming punchlines along the vein of, “Don’t look at the water!  Water can form a reflective surface just like a mirror and that’s how they get you!”

Sutherland plays a cop, Ben Carson, taken off the force for accidentally gunning down an undercover officer.  Worn from that emotional toll, Carson has become estranged from his wife (Paula Patton), now lives with his sister (Amy Smart), and is stuck with the night shift guarding a mall gutted by fire years earlier.  The mall is filled with the titular objects of vanity, except these damage proof image replicators enjoy torturing observers by either showing them scenes of strangers burning to death or the observer killing themselves.  In the latter case, the logic goes that what the mirrors show happening happens.  If it catches a door in its reflection, said reflection can close the door by, well, you get the process.

Ben Carson catches on quick to the supernatural non-dilemma, but that is also part of the problem.  As far as I, audience member, know, Carson was a standard detective.  He may have once had a career solving murders, but I recall no mention of him being a member of the Scooby Gang.  Why Carson goes on a crusade to search high and low in a haunted mansion of rubble for answers he knows are unexplainable is beyond me.  The plot does wrangle a procedural investigation out of it, though, which takes longer to realize its conclusion than the audience does.

I’ll return to the strained plotting later.  In the mean time, I want to wonder how a chain of events was set in motion that found Alexandre Aja -master behind all that Elevated Tension and those Ocular Hills – making a one trick movie with less atmosphere than Platinum Dunes’ remake of HOUSE OF WAX.  The two both involve a surface object as their hook and are set in creepy places with excess floor space.  I imagine if you remove actors from WAX’ budget (there aren’t a whole lot of folk in MIRRORS, and no ‘names’ other than Sutherland), they were working within the same sandbox.  And yet MIRRORS has no palpable atmosphere, no sustained tension, and most importantly, never creates an inherent aversion to the inanimate object in its title.

Maxime Alexandre, who shot all of Aja’s produced fare thus far, turns in a sub par shoot.  Much of it is poorly lit (I certainly had a hard time reflecting available light from the screen on to my watch to see how much longer was left in the mess) even for a film set largely in the dark.  Granted, this is attributable to Aja’s need to cover up his sub par visual effects.  No CGI in the film is up to snuff.  A sequence in which a jaw is partially ripped away from its natural place on the human body looks a joke until the the character stops thrashing around, at which point the tremendous looking practical effect is used (for once).

Returning to script inadequacy, I’d like to address the following, which I feel is just one minor indicator as to the lack of dialog that went on behind the scenes.  Towards the end of the film Carson’s family is being tortured by the mirrors while he is off doing his Scooby investigating.  The house has been flooded while his wife slept (thus bringing out the water line paraphrased earlier).  Patton’s character does a bunch of running around trying to save her children and gets drenched head to toe in the process.  Her daughter receives a tiny cut to her neck (can’t cut a kid too deep, that’d be a movie no-no) and Patton’s scripted response is to tear off her soaked top and use it to stop the barely bleeding.  And then she instantly grabs a first aid kit, patching her daughter up proper.  But of course more water mayhem is to follow and we now have the sexy Paula Patton creeping cautiously around her house in a drenched white top.  Goal achieved.

This house sequence is actually my favorite in the film.  A slick concept aided in no small part by the fact that Patton is a knockout at the center of it, but here is the rub: the shirt removal.  Why go through all the trouble of having a pointless sequence whose agenda could not be more obvious than to result in Patton wearing one less shirt?  Why allow someone like me to laugh at it when you could have simply had her wearing one less shirt from the get go?  I agree that this is a tiny topic to be talking about, but it represents a problem I think spanned the whole production.

No one questioned it.  Either Patton never said to Aja, “Look, Alex, I know I have a kick ass rack, but would I really take my shirt off so flagrantly in such a situation?  Can’t I just be wearing the white shirt before I get wet?” or Aja took the question and shot it down.  Whatever transpired, no one involved bothered to evaluate even the littlest of details.  Ignore enough little things and in no time they’ve Voltron’ed together into something undeniable.

Aside from a goofy plot, this obliviousness is what hurts MIRRORS most as it leaves average viewers chuckling and discerning viewers with dismissive questioning.  How did the mirrors scrounge up the right postage to mail Sutherland a UPS package?  How does the building stay standing after we see its entire foundation crumble to pieces?  Why should we care about a father figure that slams his fists into walls and yells at his wife in audible distance of his kids?  Why are the boy’s freckles so annoying?  Why computer generate cheap looking flames when a stuntman on fire has worked for decades?  And just how did the mirrors deliver that package to the UPS store anyway?

‘Tis fortunate that MIRRORS does reach a goofiness saturation point.  It is hard to remember when exactly it took place, probably around the time Jack Bauer kidnaps a nun at gun point, but you start to get in to how stupid it all is.  Once this happens, fun can be had from MIRRORS.  I even let go and allowed myself to love the film’s final scene (note: the only identical remainder from the comparably poor Korean source film).

Then again, it is rarely a good thing when one must allow themselves to submit to a film’s carelessness.