MIRRORS 2 (2010) Review

Directed by: Victor Garcia

Starring: Nick Stahl, Emmanuelle Vaugier, Lawrence Turner

I've been putting off watching this movie for a while now, because I just had the feeling that it was really going to suck. I don't normally like to judge movies before I see them, but in this case I can say that my instincts were right.
I actually enjoyed the first MIRRORS film from 2008, and it did surprisingly well making almost $80 million worldwide. But I've noticed that the vast majority of horror fans really didn't like it at all. Suffice to say, if you didn't enjoy the first movie, you will absolutely hate the sequel.

Max Matheson is a young man recovering from a car accident in which his girlfriend was killed. He is in a deep state of depression and blames himself for his girlfriend's death. After one of the security guards at his father's department store 'goes crazy' and cuts himself up, his father offers Max the job as replacement nightwatchman. The department store is of course the Mayflower, but not the original store in New York. The new store is in New Orleans and is brand new from the ground up. Luckily however, they saved one of the mirrors from the original store and are now using it as a centerpiece.
Max starts his job and immediately starts seeing visions of a cadaverous woman in the mirrors. After telling his doctor, she reassures him that these visions are in fact a good thing, and a sign that his mind is ready to heal. He's not so reassured however, when he starts to see people's deaths in the mirrors. Especially when those people wind up dead.
Eventually he works out that these visions are linked to a young woman who worked at the Mayflower, but has since gone missing. He teams up with her sister to try and get to the bottom of things, and eventually everything unravels and they save the day.

I've probably said a little too much there, but honestly it's a fairly predictable film and after the first few scenes you already know what's going to happen anyway. In fact that might just be the one thing this film has over it's predecessor, it's a lot easier to follow than the first movie. A little too easy.
The death scenes were really disappointing, and other than the one involving an almost-clever glass-guillotine they were pretty boring and unoriginal. Another aspect which was both disappointing and confusing, was the fact that they changed the whole mythology from the first film. In this sequel for some reason, Max could see other people's deaths in the mirrors before those people actually died. In the first movie though, people could only see their own death in the mirrors.
If the movie wasn't titled MIRRORS 2 and the department store wasn't called the Mayflower, you could swear that while they were making this sequel they didn't even have the first film in mind.

The acting was pretty poor across the board. Nick Stahl (Sin City, Terminator 3) who played Max gave a predictably wooden performance, and the others were really not much better. Lawrence Turner (Red, 9 Dead) as Keller Landreaux was probably the most interesting character, but still showed some sub-par acting skills.
I didn't really care about any of the characters at all. There wasn't enough depth to any of them. Maybe if the film had worked on a little character development I might have enjoyed it more.

If you've seen the first film you will no doubt be disappointed by the sequel. If you haven't seen the first, then you might just enjoy this one, but I doubt it.