Almost immediately, Ben starts having issues at work. The mirror-filled rooms start playing tricks on him. Between seeing things like burning women that only appear in the mirrors and seeing (and feeling) himself caught on fire, he knows immediately that something isn't right.
Ben tries to turn to his estranged wife, Amy (Paula Patton), his sister, Angela (Amy Smart) and his kids Michael (Cameron Boyce) and Erica (Daisy Carson), but it isn't until they start noticing things in the mirrors themselves that they actually believe him.
I have to say, I enjoyed the movie's story and there were several twists that I attempted to predict that fooled me, but there are also quite a few things that bothered me, the main one being young Boyce. His character is supposed to be six or so, but the actor seems to be around 10 or 11, and his attempts to act the younger part just get really annoying. Mind you, I enjoyed his part in Eagle Eye and felt like he was a pretty good actor in that, but it just didn't feel right in this movie. Quite frankly, I don't know why the character had to be so young. If Boyce had just acted his age, then there wouldn't have been any problems. I can only imagine that the creators wanted a younger character to make him more innocent or something for the events that happen later in the movie.
The other major part that bothers me is when someone looks into a mirror, moves away and doesn't realize their reflection didn't move with them. It happens a couple of times in the film, and at least one of these times, it leads to that character's death. My main complaint about this is that the character didn't notice. We are so used to seeing our reflections move with us, that I have to imagine we would notice when it doesn't. Some part of the human brain would have to say "Wait, something isn't right here." It might be more of a personal gripe, but it did annoy me quite a bit.
The Mirrors: Unrated Blu-ray release comes with both the theatrical and unrated versions of the movie. And quite frankly, there aren't a lot of differences between the two versions - mostly just shorter and less gruesome death scenes. Interestingly enough, the first time I saw the movie, I enjoyed it quite a bit. It wasn't until I re-watched it to see the other version that I started getting really annoyed by the previously mentioned issues. But I have to say, the move to Blu-ray might not have been the best thing for this movie. Special effects like fire and a scene where a character's jaw gets ripped off just don't look good and feel really fake. I have a feeling that these very same effects would look a lot better on standard DVD.
Mirrors: Unrated also features a rather long making-of "shockumentary" as well as storyboard sequences and deleted scenes. The BonusView feature is a picture-in-picture commentary with the creators of the film alongside the storyboards. And, as an added bonus, the movie comes with a digital copy. As for deleted scenes, there are quite a few, but nothing is really missed by having them removed from the film. The alternate ending is definitely not as good as the one used.
There are a lot of aspects to Mirrors that I both like and don't like. Most of the horror scenes are pure jump scares, and about halfway through the movie, when you see a reflective surface, you start to expect something will jump out at you. That's not to say I didn't fall for it a few times, but there were definitely a lot more that I didn't fall for. While I enjoyed the story and the ending, both the special effects and the scares seemed a bit cheap making it a mixed bag and probably not appealing to the general public.
