Dark mirror

Year of release : 2007

Run time : 1h26m

Genre : Psychological Horror / Indie

Cast : Lisa Vidal

The movie was co-written, directed and edited by Pablo Proenza.

The movie opens with the end, with the lead, Deborah, waking up in bed next to her son, only to realize she’s been stabbed.

We go back to when she and her family went to check on a house after visiting 14 houses. They visit the house of a former painter. Deborah likes the way the light comes through the house’s beautiful stained glass windows and doors. And decides it’s the house she wants before talking to her husband.

From the moment they move in, Deborah starts seeing someone in a black cloak outside the house, through the stained glass windows .

Deborah is a photographer who can’t seem to get a job, for no one is hiring. One night she takes a picture of herself taking a picture in the mirror (she is positioned in front of two mirrors facing each other), and the flash is reflected on and on after, through the mirrors, and the picture comes back without her in it, as if she took a picture of the bathroom tiles.

One day, after an interview, she hears the men hiring talking vulgar about her, and her camera snaps a picture of them. After, the one saying the vulgar things about her is chased by a cloaked person, while the light flashes, and is being k1lled.

Deborah notices one of her old neighbours is always staring at her through the window. Another neighbour that she befriends tells her it’s because the painter who used to live there disappeared with his whole family.

One day, when she tries to take pictures of a breakfast table, she thinks she sees the cloaked person at the corner of her eye, and sees her mother is in the kitchen, although she didn’t ring the door bell or announced she’s coming over. When she’s asking her son, Ian, to give grandmother a kiss, he runs away scared.

Her mother tells her about the windows, and the art of Feng Shui, how the mirrors around the window ledge are supposed to scare the evil spirits away. Deborah tells her the glass is considered to be a vessel for the spirits which would get trapped inside, so they wouldn’t hurt anyone. Her mother even asks her if she’s doing research about the house .

After she leaves, her son is going crazy in the bathroom, unable to open the door. Looking though the key hole of the door, she sees the cloaked person, and helps him put the door handle back, and get out, only to see there was a cloak hanging in the bathroom.

Later that night, she shows her husband how in the bathroom mirror they can see a door on the hallway which doesn’t exist in real life! Her husband gets angry as he doesn’t understand what’s happening, and brushes her off.

After going to another interview where they’re not hiring and seeing things, a woman bangs on her car window, saying she damaged her car, but she doesn’t see anything, and she starts feeling weird. It feels she missed chunks of time, as she wakes up at her son’s school.

Her son tells her he hears a weird sound in the chimney of the fireplace, and she finds a painting with an apron in an old rag hidden inside. She hangs the painting on the wall (I don’t like it), and wears the apron (who does that?! I wonder if she even cleaned it!)! That very night she wears the apron when her husband comes home without anything else on (I hope that apron was clean!)! But it doesn’t go anywhere, for she hears on the news the woman who was banging on her car window is missing.

Talking to her mother on the phone, she tells her she found things about the painter, who couldn’t paint until he got married and moved into the house, and his painting style changed. Deborah doesn’t really hear her nor has time for her, as she sees her old neighbour spying on her, and her other friendly neighbour, an actress, invites her over.

 

When she gets home, she finds pictures in her phone that she didn’t take. And she realizes all the people her camera photographed, are missing.

I personally enjoyed the movie, although I saw that it doesn’t have positive reviews.

I liked how the movie was filmed, the camera angles and reflections. I liked how the transition from scene to scene was made. When the camera shakes, it feels we are in her head, as she’s slowly going insane.

Deborah starts disconnecting from her family once she starts living in the house, as she always seems to be thinking of something else, and doesn’t pay attention to what her husband tells her. She seems she doesn’t even know about his problems when her young actress neighbour brings it up. She starts seeing things, but it’s like she blocks it from her memory after it happens. The stained glass also shows her a different version of reality.

Whenever Deborah doesn’t feel well, the light is cast as if through a mirror.

If you pay attention to the details, SPOILERS I think that when she took the picture in front of the two mirrors, is when she got possessed. Because that’s when it all starts, all her “visions”, and her son is afraid of her. Her mother is dead, and when she told her son to say Hi, he either didn’t see anything or if she was really there, or something else was there, it scared him. Maybe her mother came to warn her considering their conversation.END OF SPOILERS

One thing that bothered me is that it feels she discovered certain things off screen, or maybe certain scenes were missing.

The acting was good.

I liked the visual effects with the infinity mirror, the reflections and the way the light was cast throughout the whole movie.

The soundtrack was good.

The movie appears as being released in 2007, 2008 and 2009 !

Rating : Worth a watch !