Mirrors
Cast: Amy Smart, Kiefer Sutherland, Paula Patton, Jason Flemyng,
Julian Glover, Ezra Buzzington, John Shrapnel, Cameron Boyce, Erica
Gluck
Kiefer Sutherland stars as an NYPD detective-turned-security guard
who discovers something sinister lurking in the mirrors of a
fire-damaged department store in Haute Tension writer/director Alexandre
Aja’s menacing study in the origins of evil. It’s been just about a
year since mercurial police detective Ben Carson (Sutherland) was
suspended from the NYPD for the fatal shooting of an undercover officer,
and ever since that fateful day he’s been locked in a self-destructive
spiral of anger and alcoholism. Increasingly isolated from his wife and
kids, Ben spends most nights crashed-out at his sister Angela’s (Amy
Smart) apartment in Queens.
But Ben hasn’t given up hope just yet, and in order to get his life
back together and prove that he’s still capable of supporting his family
he takes a job as the night watchman at the Mayflower department store.
The Mayflower used to be a lavish symbol of inner-city prosperity, that
is, until a raging inferno gutted the building while claiming numerous
lives in the process. These days, the Mayflower is a scorched reminder
of human misery, the ornate mirrors therein reflecting a suffering so
profound that it begins to wear on Ben’s already-fragile psyche. Not
only that, but whatever force dwells behind the shimmering glass seems
to have gained the power to alter reality as well.
After Ben gazes into the mirrors and sees a vision of himself being
relentlessly tortured, he is horrified to experience violent
convulsions, spontaneous bleeding, and frightening asphyxiation. And
while his sister is always willing to lend a sympathetic ear, she chalks
the anomalies up to an unusually potent mix of stress and anxiety.
Unfortunately for Ben, his estranged wife, Amy (Paula Patton), isn’t
nearly as forgiving. A prosaic NYPD medical examiner who has seen her
fair share of tragedy, Amy fears that Ben’s erratic behavior could be
placing their children in danger. Later, as Ben begins to draw
connections between his increasingly gruesome visions and a former
Mayflower security guard who vanished without a trace, he begins to
suspect that an unimaginable evil is using the mirrors as a gateway into
the real world, and that his family is in mortal danger from forces
beyond their realm of understanding.
Perhaps if he Ben can manage to convince Amy that their children’s
lives are at risk, he can summon the courage to face the greatest evil
he has ever known.
