Watched Mirrors with Keifer Sutherland last night. Yes, he popped around, just as I was watched a film with him in it. What are the chances?
Two reasons why we’d LoveFilmed this. Firstly, I’d seen a trailer, and it looked okay. And secondly, at the time I was putting it on the list, I was writing a thing which I was worried might be similar, and IN ORDER NOT TO COPY I thought I should check out what had already been done. But now I’m not writing that thing so it doesn’t matter.
It’s a pretty scary film. It’s not as scary as The Ring, but it’s scarier than Dark Water. It shares so many features with these films I think there’s a formula. It’s not just that they’re all sort of based on Far Eastern horror movies (hope Far Eastern isn’t a racist term, no offence intended). They also feature unrelenting rain and English actors, with American accents, playing mysterious, world-weary caretakers who Hold A Terrible Secret. Plus there’s a lot of crumbling buildings, looking things up in musty records, and isolated communities, but if you’re going to complain about those staples turning up in a Ghost Story you might as well complain about them containing ghosts as well.
Oh, and they’re all about separated parents (separated due to financial or work woes), with a couple of kids – a quick shortcut both to family jeopardy and to a reconciliation love story.
As I said, it’s all very well done, if pretty much don’t-fuck-with-the-formula, until the end where it turns into a Bruce Willis movie. I know Keifer is an action hero, and his audience would be expecting that, but it worked against the whole everyman-out-of-his-depth thing and I kept expecting him to call Chloe at CTU for backup.
Protocol!