Mirrors 2 (2010)

The low budget direct-to-DVD sequels of low budget theatrical released remakes of bad Asian horror films continues with Mirrors 2.  Of course calling it Mirrors 2 usually signifies it's a continuance of a story started in Mirrors (a film I have not seen, starring Kiefer Sutherland).  But the way the film opens and progresses, and from the few things I've read online, Mirrors 2 is essentially a stand alone film with no relation to the original except for the fact there's quite a few mirrors.

Terminator 3's Nick Stahl stars as Max Matheson who'd recently lost his finance in a car crash that he continually blames himself for.  After living the past year in a drug and alcohol induced stooper, Max is attempting to get his life back on track and takes the position of night watchmen at an up-and-coming boutique clothing store.  His first night on the job he starts seeing things, the reflection of dead girl in a mirror staring at him, later a girl from work removing her head, and the next day he learns that girl was found decapitated in her shower.  As the film progresses the visions and murders continue and it seems to all connect to a girl who worked at the store and disappeared two months ago, leading Max to team up with the girl's sister (Emmanuelle Vaugier) in an attempt to discover the truth.

While I may be a fan of old school B-movies I ironically tend to stray away from the present day direct-to-DVD releases unless someone I enjoy watching happens to have a semi-large role, which was the case with Mirrors 2.  My reason for watching was Emmanuelle Vaugier (who unfortunately gives one of her more mediocre performances here), and the added bonus of Christy Romano.  Romano quickly takes a choke hold on the film with the most memorable scenes, leaving any Disney channel fan of her youth with their mouths left agape.  Romano has seeming shed (literally) her Disney channel image from Even Stevens (a guilty pleasure of mine) and the animated show Kim Possible (couldn't stand it) and let it all hang out in her short handful of scenes, which ultimately leads to her character being killed off in the film's best kill scene.

Aside from Vaugier and Romano the film's best acting performance easily comes from Stahl, which shouldn't be a surprise considering he's the only actor with any big budget production experience.  The rest of the performances range from average to awful, with awful easily going to the two cops investigating the murders, who I believe were supposed to be some sort of comic relief.  The special effects were surprisingly better than I expected, but most of the mirror / kill scenes were extremely over-the-top and dragged out for far too long.  Plus I kept wondering why these idiots kept standing in front of the mirrors?  If  I saw something creepy in a mirror I'd either run away or smash the sucker!  On the flip side, all the mirror scenes with the creepy dead chick popping up succeeded in continually creeping me out, even though you can see them coming a mile away, and Romano's kill scene was extremely well done, very suspenseful, very gruesome, very realistic looking.

Overall, Mirrors 2 is comparable to an episode of Supernatural without the series stars, Sam and Dean Winchester, I think that series even did an episode similar to this which is essentially a retelling of the Bloody Mary tale.  The film's story is average, it flows well, doesn't run too long, and packaged with a decent performance by Stahl makes this one very watchable; throw in Vaugier and Romano and it's your average modern B-movie feature.  Still unless you're a fan of an actor in the film, like I was, I'd probably have passed it by simply based on the rather poor consensus that it's currently drumming up.

6/10