Kiefer Sutherland Dives into Horror in This Twisted Ghost Movie (2025)

Every so often, a truly gripping movie will get panned by audiences and critics alike. Hidden gems get buried deeper, and the ideal audience for the movie never finds it. Alexandre Aja’s 2008 Mirrors, starring Kiefer Sutherland as Ben Carson, is one of those films. With a lowly 15% on Rotten Tomatoes, Mirrors has not seen a lot of love. A remake of Kim Sung-ho’s 2003 directorial debut, Into the Mirror, Mirrors takes obvious joy in playing with horror tropes. Mirrors blends intense gore, supernatural hauntings, and psychological twists to keep viewers glued to the screen, even when they’re wincing away.

How ‘Mirrors’ Plays with Genre

Mirrors have long been a staple in the horror genre. Symbolically, mirrors reflect everything a character may not want to see about themselves. In Mirrors, the horror and haunting are intrinsically tied to not just mirrors, but any reflective surface. Kiefer Sutherland’s Ben is a character wincing away from himself. A police officer currently on suspension after having shot and killed someone, his whole life is falling apart as he struggles to accept what happened. Having taken a position as a night-shift security guard in an abandoned department store destroyed by a fire years earlier, he encounters a malevolent presence. Living inside mirrors, this entity has the power to embody a reflection and kill.

First and foremost, this film is structured around a demonic haunting. In organizing the story this way, Aja can branch out and incorporate additional sub-genres and genre tropes into the movie. The opening scene of the film is the perfect example of all the ingredients mixing. A security guard runs from an unseen force until, finally, he’s cornered in a locker room where all the lockers swing open to reveal door mirrors. His reflection has a mind of its own and shows the audience just how gruesome the film can be. The gore feels gritty and realistic, while at the same time, clearly taking pleasure in how over-the-top the blood spurting is. When the security guard bends down to pick up a piece of glass, but his reflection stays standing, Aja is demonstrating how formidable this Big Bad is going to be.

As the security guard nervously rambles and begs for his life, there is a wink at the psychological toll the presence will have on the human characters. Like with most hauntings, there is a period where reality and sanity are questioned. Ben and his son, Michael, frequently have their encounters with the entity dismissed as some sort of psychological defect. One of the more unnerving scenes of the film is a phone call between Ben and his wife, Amy. As her voice trembles, telling him she thinks someone is in the house, the suspense and tension feels more akin to that of a drama thriller than a horror. The film makes it explicit from the onset that the haunting is real, but as Ben is doubted by those around him, and the entity itself toys with him, he experiences an unraveling.

‘Mirrors’ Has Impressively Gnarly Gore

Though the playfulness with genre is deftly done, the most show-stopping aspect of Mirrors is its use of body horror. 2000s horror movies loved their blood and guts, and Mirrors is no exception. The scene where Angie’s reflection rips off her jaw is one of the most unforgettable moments in all of 21st-century horror. The sound effects are skin crawling, and the special effects are so realistic and gnarly, that the viewer wants to look away, but can’t. As audiences continue to complain about how every movie feels like a cheap knock-off of something better, it is refreshing to see a film sneak in a scene that is so effective, it's impossible to forget. Mirrors opens on a moment of intense gore, and only gets bloodier from there.

The whole film is violent and raw. Set in a fire-ravaged, luxury department store, the special effects team got to really play with different types of burn wounds. Early on, while Carson investigates mysterious screams, he finds a woman covered in peeling skin and burn marks writhing in pain. He even sees shoppers go up in flames. Contrasted against the cool blue and gray of the husk of a department store, the burn make-up pops. The effects for these moments are so well done the audience can practically feel their skin burning in sympathy. While non-horror fans often dismiss body horror as gratuitous, Mirrors makes it clear why gore is so essential. The threat of this film is invisible, shapeshifting to take on the form of whoever is looking in the mirror. The terror the Big Bad invokes, and the havoc it creates, has to do double duty in convincing the audience to be properly scared of it without an actual monster design or villain speech. With the carnage as extreme as it is in Mirrors, the audience is afraid, for both the characters and of what they're going to see next.

Mirrors has what every good old-fashioned horror movie needs; a genuinely scary Big Bad and scenes of wild bloodshed. Aja goes above and beyond by playing up all the psychological suspense of the uncertainty of a haunting, creating a genuinely harrowing tone that dogs the film. Initially dismissed as half-baked and overindulgent, Mirrors deserves a critical reexamination today for its ability to leave a lasting impression on the viewer.

Mirrors

R

Horror

Mystery

Release Date

August 15, 2008

Director

Alexandre Aja

Cast

Kiefer Sutherland, Paula Patton, Cameron Boyce, Erica Gluck, Amy Smart

Runtime

110 minutes

Main Genre

Horror

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