Ever
since Walt Disney’s Snow White and the
Seven Dwarfs depicted the evil queen’s narcissistic gaze into the magic
mirror while imploring ‘who is the fairest one of all?’, the mirror has been a
mainstay of modern horror evoking the supernatural or devilish. Including but not limited to films like The Shining, Poltergeist and The Evil Dead
movies, the reflective pane of glass as a tool for supernatural horror is
one filmmakers can’t help but return to time and time again. Movies like Mirrors and Oculus continued
to carry the torch in later years yet the object rarely became the focus of a
movie except in certain scenes.
With
the directorial debut of eventual television director Marina Sargenti’s one and
only feature film Mirror, Mirror, (originally
entitled The Black Glass) the black
magic mirror took center stage and presented a largely derivative but still
engaging horror film with some inspired tricks up it’s evil sleeves. Enter introverted goth teen Megan (Rainbow
Harvest), a poor woman’s Lydia Deetz from Beetlejuice,
who moves into a small town with her widowed mother Susan (Karen Black). Upon entering high school, she endures the
nastiness and scorn of her classmates and quickly becomes ostracized. That is, until a certain tall antique mirror
left behind by the previous owner begins to effect drastic changes within Megan’s
life, gifting her supernatural powers over others ala Carrie, setting the stage for demonic energies to spill over into
our world.
An
inspired little teen horror indie with more than a few wild death scenes and
some clever visual effects sequences, the Detroit, Michigan produced Mirror, Mirror is the kind of film where
you can point out its influences before they appear onscreen and yet its hard
to mind as the movie plays out. From eventual Deadtime Stories screenwriters Annette and Gina Cascone, we’ve
seen this kind of story before of a once good girl gone bad thanks to forces of
black magic beyond her understanding or control. We’ve also seen the mean high-school girl
film many times over and winds up holding our attention anyway thanks to the
leading performance of Rainbow Harvest and to the visual effects team who cook
up some grisly gore and creature effects.
Also Blade Runner fans are
inclined to look for William Sanderson as Karen Black’s on/off boyfriend.
Premiering
theatrically in Detroit, Michigan, Mirror,
Mirror opened to decent business but mixed to middling reviews. Over the years, however, the film became a
franchise spawning a total of three sequels before forming cult status though
fans still point to the first film as the best.
Seen now, Mirror, Mirror definitely
shows its age as a product of the 1990s but on its own terms remains a nifty
horror indie and another important forward step for the development of original
homegrown Michigan horror. Dated and
derivative but nonetheless an effective demonic chiller.
--Andrew Kotwicki