When photographer Deoborah (Lisa Vidal, THE BLUE DINER), her computer programmer husband Jim (David Chisum, FLIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD), and their son Ian (Joshua Pelegrin) move into an old house in the Los Angeles subburbs, Deborah is unnerved by glimpses of a hooded figure watching their house, prying and exhibitionist neighbors, and strange things seen through the house's mirrors and window glass (including doorways that shouldn't be there). Her mother Grace (Lupe Ontiveros, REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES) notices that window glass is arranged by the principles of Feng Shui in order to protect the house from evil spirits by attracting and trapping them in the glass. Deborah starts to believe that evil spirits may indeed be lurking in the home after she takes a photograph of herself in the mirror and people who she subsequently photographs with the same camera start disappearing. Looking into the house's history, she learns that it was previously owned by a struggling painter whose work suddenly became very successful after moving into the house (that is, before he and lover mysteriously vanished). Deborah's obsession alienates her son and husband, but more people are vanishing around her, and she must act quickly when she discovers photographs of her family that she does not recall taking on the camera.

Although made on a low budget, DARK MIRROR is slickly produced and strikingly mainstream (in fact, one could imagine this one garnering a theatrical release had it been cast with higher-profile actors). While the film is certainly more interesting than Alexandre Aja's similarly-themed but awful MIRRORS (itself an extremely loose adaptation of the Korean film INTO THE MIRROR), it is not without flaws. The producer mentions wanting to use horror to explore feminist concerns about the challenges of professional women with families, but Deborah going stir crazy at home while unable to find creative work has a SHINING-esque feel familiar to films with frustrated creative male protagonists developing obsessions with the seeming supernatural. Because the digitally-created supernatural sights, jump scares, scoring, and editing rhythms are so familiar from many a mainstream horror effort of late, the first half of the film drags rather than draws us in. Once it gets to the point where Deborah starts making discoveries (through supernatural direction - in a bit that was seemingly aped in MIRRORS 2, the plot of which was closer to that of the Korean original) rather than plot revelations in the narrative), things start getting interesting; although even then everything feels so familiar (and there's an over-reliance on telling rather than depicting plot revelations). Vidal and Chisum are engaging leads with good chemistry, and one wishes that the writers had spent more time exploring the fragility of their relationship beneath the surface. Daeg Faerch - young Michael Meyers in Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN remake - has a small part as a neighborhood kid.

Eric Cotenas