Mirrors

The 2008 offerings once more walk among us.
AdeBrown
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Mirrors

Post by AdeBrown »

JACK BAUER FIGHTS DEMONS (car chase included) !
JACK BAUER THREATENS NUN WITH GUN !
JACK BAUER FIGHTS HIS OWN REFLECTION (except that he doesn't)

"I should have believed you" (no you should have locked him up, since he seemed to deduce what was happening in a way that suggested he had read the script).

On reflection (snigger) this was not as bad as I said afterwards (sorry for my harshness, Rachel if you're reading this) :)
However the first half was badly let down by the second.
very poor, and still my least favourite (disclaimer: I did not see Freakdog, Tokyo Gore Police or Scar 3D and suspect at least one of these was worse than Srorrim.
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Post by MaxRenn »

Did it seem strange to anyone else that in a building that had burned down, there was a fully functioning sprinkler system? It was absolutely hilarious, wonder what effect it will have on the (opinion alert) absurdly overrated Aja's fanboy rep.
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Post by crashd »

"Beware of the water, water creates reflections."

DON'T MAKE ME THREATEN YOU!@
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Post by DavieT »

Jack Bauer Monster Slayer - unintentionally funny in places - well it was on the ocasions that I woke up anyway.
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Post by MaxRenn »

Smash all the mirrors, except the wing mirrors on my car, I need those dammit!
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Post by JoeyBroChill »

Being an Aja fan, you can imagine the pure disappointment felt after watching this atrocity!

It was a PG-13, run-of-the-mill, made for the masses piece of sh*t dressed up as an R-rated ghost story!

Talk about selling out...20th Century Fox now has Aja by the balls...

Still...the dialogue was so ridiculous, I did get some laughs out of it so therefore it is not the worst film of the weekend (The Broken still!)
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Post by rickjames »

Man, this was so bad I just had to comment. Favourites:

Jack Bauer pulling a gun on a nun. Possibly the greatest scene since Nic Cage mugged a little girl at gunpoint for her bike in The Wicker Man ("Step away from the bike!")

"Don't make me threaten you, kind old man whose house I just invited myself into and made you drag up painful memories helpfully explaining everything I needed to know."

Horrendous expositionary dialogue. Amy Smart helpfully tells us she is Jack Bauer's sister about 5 times ("I am your little sister after all!")

Jack Bauer talking to himself constantly, with no-one around. When looking at Anna Esseker's death certificates: "Oh my God. They don't match!" Thanks, Jack!

The silly demon wants Anna Esseker back, right? So rather than go out into every mirror in the world to have a look (and it can clearly go to mirrors anywhere like in the Bauer house), it just stays in the hospital/mall, trying to get every security guard to help it find Esseker. Fair enough, it's very selective about the help it enlists. Only it decides to scare the shit out of the guards, making them kill themselves. It's not really doing itself any favours, to be honest. Doesn't seem like a productive way to find a nun. Luckily its next guard happens to be Jack Bauer, who as we all know can find anyone anywhere. But even now the demon still makes things bloody difficult for him. Silly demon.

More exposition: helpful other security guard explains that there's no electricity. So Jack goes down to the basement and turns the lights on.

Jack Bauer is not good at acting as if he's on cgi-fire.

"I should have believed you." Enough said.

Silly demon terrifies the hell out of everyone but befriends Jack Bauer's son. Why? No mention of this ever again. Perhaps it was trying a nice and simple 'ask questions' approach to finding Esseker? Silly demon spends ages happily chatting with Mini Bauer. Then promptly tries to drown him. Worst new best friend ever.

Down in the morgue, looking at previous guard's corpse. Mortician: "I guess he must have broken a mirror then used a piece to cut his own throat." You guess? You should be a detective. You're wasted in the morgue. "Seven year's bad luck, eh?" before throwing head back for a cheesy laugh with Mrs Bauer. The inappropriateness of laughing over a corpse pales into insignificance with the rest of the film though.

"Water causes reflections! It's science!"

Objects in the rear view mirror be appear closer than they are. That's it!

Instead of making me scared to look in a mirror, I walked out looking in every mirror I could find, desperately hoping to see Jack Bauer pointing a gun at me. Or a nun.
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Post by rickjames »

Also, pigeons are terrifying.
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Post by Jekyll »

Was really really bad.

Hilariously funny in places but I doubt they are for the reasons the director intended.
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Post by dangerous_jamie »

I thoroughly enjoyed the ending.

I was certain he was going to see an Abe Lincoln statue with a monkey's head on it.

Funniest film all weekend.
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Post by HOLLYWOODNIGHTMARES »

I was thinking that it couldn't have been a very big fire as all the curtains, clothes and shop dummies were intact just a little dusty also the dummies still had their wigs on , not even singed....oh it's the little things i tell thee....
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Post by odishon »

SO glad I saw this at Frightfest as in a standard mutli-plex it may not have turned into such a comedy and would have left a bad taste of disappointment in the mouth.

As it was I really enjoyed laughing at it with the FF crowd.

I hope Aja made a packet from this and uses it to make some more great non Hollywood studio films - after he's finished Piranha 3D of course!
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Post by jonbly »

jonbly kinda liked this... maybe because most of the scares were honest and plot-related, rather than just random events as in The Broken. But the ending got ridiculous (along with some of the dialogue, as quoted above). It's good thing they had Jack Bauer, otherwise he'd never have survived being thrown through a wall...
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Post by Hello Doris! »

I kept thinking the "America, Fuck Yeah" song would come on and the screen would spilt up.

So bloody bad it was brilliant!
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Post by The Soapmaker »

Rickjames has summed it up so perfectly there's really no need to say anything else. But....

What a load of tripe it was. The original Korean film was far too clever for American audiences (not that it was a work of genius or anything) so let's take out all the good bits and replace them with Jack Bauer and a silly Sadako/Samara character. Ring 3: Mirrors.

Actually, the first 20 minutes or so wasn't bad. The department store set looked fantastic and there must have been loads of scope to base the story there. But instead they shifted it to all those farcical scenes with Jack Bauer's oh-so-sweet boring family and their green paint. I kept looking at the screen and thinking "But... there's a shiny table. And a picture frame. And that gleaming car." Why did they have so many bloody mirrors anyway?
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