Language - English
Genre - Horror, Haunted house
Characters:
The
Mirror - A villain, a portal and general mcgubbin
Annika
- Our protagonist
Ian
- Annika's boyfriend
Chad
- party organizer
Melissa
- Chad's girlfriend, a bit of bi**h
Jack
- a party goer
Joey
- a party goer, Jack's sidekick
Frederick
- a homeless man
The
Countess - Chad’s boss, not a real countess
Reflections
is the fourth and final of the 'Tales of the Mirror Mirror' series.
After the thirds film to try to take series in a different
direction Reflections returns to its horror roots concentrating more
on the 'haunted house' elements of the second film, Ravens
Dance than the high school horror style of the first.
The
film opens with Ian, a young man and his girlfriend Annika entering
an old theater that Ian owns so he can propose to her. At the
same time the theater cleaner finds an old (yet familiar if you've
seen the other films) mirror. The cleaner sings and dances in
front of the mirror and then burst into flames. Ian and Annika
hear the cleaner scream, they go to investigate and find the remains
of the cleaner. Something come out of the mirror and chases
them, killing Ian. The film then jumps a year where we find
Annika is still missing Ian, to please her mother Annika goes out to
a Halloween party that is being thrown at the old theater. Following
what she thinks is the ghost of Ian she ends up in the room with the mirror and, along with four of the party guests ends up getting
knocked out. When the five of them wake up all the party guests
have gone and a hurricane is blowing outside. The five try to
get out or survive the increasingly strange events that are happening
in the theater.
The
characters in Reflections would be at home in most slasher/young
adult horror films as they fall into the normal familiar roles. You
have
Annika
as the innocent virgin
Chad
as the jock
Melissa
as the spoilt girl who is used to getting what (or who) she wants
Jack
as the bully type who just takes what he wants, this includes women
Joey
as the stupid one
Annika
also fills the role as the strange one or the outsider, she doesn't
fit into the group and annoys most of the others in one way or
another but she still manages to be a likeable character whereas the
virgin in a lot of other slasher is either so annoying you want them
to hurry up and die or is there to change and grow strong and fit in
(in other high school films the freak/virgin is used to teach the
popular girl a lesson see clueless). The roles of the other
characters do seem to be a bit in your face to begin with, although
depending on how you see the film there is a reason for this.
Jack spend the film dressed as Jack the Ripper and is portrayed
as being a very predatory person he tries to teach Joey that
"When a woman says no she really means yes. Joey spend the
film dressed as a hunchback, just in case you can't tell he's a
sidekick. He tries to live like Jack but is so pathetic no one
takes him seriously. Melissa is always trying to find ways of
being alone with Chad, she has a bad attitude towards people she
doesn't like and talks about clothes. Chad tries to be in charge and
that’s about all, he is called the jock by the other characters but
doesn't come across as the football obsessed muscle brain moron you
normally associate with that roll.
Two
of the most interesting characters are the two late comers, Frederick
the not so creepy homeless man who acts as a mentor to Annika for
most of the film and The Countess who seems almost unreal.
In
one way the Countess manages to do something that has not really been
done in any of the previous films and that is to provide a link, she
recognizes the mirror as one she had read about had led to the death
of a couple of Nun’s in a nunnery. Until this point nothing
had said that it was the same mirror in all the films, in fact the
first film had implied that the mirror could not leave the house it
was in. It is also possible that Frederick was the return of a
character from the third film who was using a different name. The
only other link that I’ve seen in any of the films was in the third
film when Joey (i don’t think it was the same character as the Joey
in Reflections) pulls a stuffed raven out of the cupboard, this is a
nod to the second film.
We
see more of the mirror demon in Reflections than we do in any of the
other films and i have to say I was a bit disappointed, in the
previous films we have seen only glimpses of some kind of a demon but
in reflections the demon we see looks like some kind of zombie. I
have to say i did like the effects on a later demon like creature
though.
Reflections
also differed from the other films in that it seemed to be carrying
an anti - rape message. There seemed to be a lot of time spent
on Jack and his views on women but also how both Annika and Melissa
reacted to his advances (as well as Joey’s attempts) in comparison
to their relationships with the other males in the film. This
differed from other horror movies, like Friday 13th and Nightmare on
elm street because these say that sex before marriage is a problem
but in Reflections the sex is not the problem it is the attitude of
the male characters towards the female ones.
Over all Reflections is a good film that brings the series back on a track that works for it and that attempts to begin to bring the films together.
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