We have finally reached the end, my friends. I’m feeling all kinds of ways about it. Gonna miss parts; gonna be waving goodbye to the others; wondering if this flick will follow Part 3 and give me the tinglies in all the right places…
Let’s find out together. I present Mirror Mirror 4: Reflections.
SPOILERS: As my editor has decided to relive her high school Goth days, she has locked herself in her bedroom and is blaring The Cure at full volume while screaming how her parents don’t understand her, I may let a spoiler or two slip through.
Setting the Stage
In this installment, the story focuses on Annika. She and her young boyfriend, Ian, have broken into the local theater where he works. And I mean like a stage theater, not movies. It’s Halloween and he figures he can swipe a couple costumes for them to wear to an upcoming party.
But Ian is a sneaky little romantic. What he does is get them a tux and wedding dress combo and once Annika has changed, he gets down on one knee and proposes.
Not gonna lie. That’s kinda dope.
Naturally, Annika is thrilled. And while the two celebrate this momentous occasion, we see the cleaning lady, Mabel, straight outta East London 1947, discovering something interesting in one of the back rooms. Of course she needs to pull the sheet off of it and can you guess what it might be, folks?
If you said that mother fucking cursed mirror, YOU win a Kewpie Doll!
And for some random reason, she’s in a really good mood as she’s admiring her reflection so SHE MAKES A FUCKING WISH TO FEEL THIS WAY FOREVER. But since she wasn’t very specific about it, she ends up aging rapidly, dying, and burning into a pile of ash.
I mean, I GUESS it worked…?
Unfortunately, Ian and Annika hear the hubbub and go to investigate. We don’t get a good look at what pops out of the mirror to chase them down, but while trying to escape, Ian is tragically killed.
Flash forward to a year later. Annika hasn’t left the house; she has nightmares every night about Ian’s death; her mom (PJ Soles in a, sadly, minor role) has the audacity to be angry that Annika isn’t trying to get better. So Annika decides she’s going to get ready and actually attend a Halloween party being thrown at the old theater where Ian died, just in time for a hurricane to blow through town.
Take THAT, Mom!
Meanwhile, at the theater, seems that some mysterious woman, The Countess, has hired Chad to set up her Macabre Maze idea for the public. Chad, his bitch ho, Melissa, and two creepy friends are kinda sorta helping him out for the event. It’s not really important. What IS important is the exposition dump about the maze being filled with artifacts from real crime scenes, murderers, and their victims.
Now that the theater is filled with a bunch of rando young people, including Annika, the shenanigans begin.
Chad is running around checking on things; the bitch ho, Melissa, is bitch hoing; the creepy guys are being creepy. And Annika is just sad and miserable. But wouldn’t you know it? She sees Ian! Understandably flustered, she chases after him. By the time she “catches up” she’s run through the maze directly to “the” mirror.
As she touches it, it shows her a memory, or possibly a memory of what could have been if Ian were alive. She kinda trances out a bit. Chad shows up and tries to wake her up. Annika passes out into Chad’s arms just as his bitch ho, Melissa, shows up. They fight, the creepy guys pop in to see what’s going on, and everyone is yelling while Annika is lying unconscious on the floor.
Suddenly the room fills with loud rumbling, the building shakes, and lightning shoots out of the mirror and zaps them all.
Let’s Get This Show Started
Now is when shit gets weird.
Everyone eventually wakes up after the zap – except Annika. She’s in some kind of dream state where she sees her mom in her room, crying. Well, holy shit. I think Annika is dead! And judging by the issues the other youths are having while Annika is between the worlds (no phone signals, no power, the exit door is mysteriously stuck) they’re probably dead, too.
As they all run around in circles, suddenly Annika is woken by Fredrick (Billy Drago), a homeless man who’s been living in the empty theater. That nobody notices at anytime earlier in the night during the party.
*sus*
He starts going on and on about how powerful mirrors are, how they can heal souls. Maybe she should look into that mirror over there and make a wish to take away her pain.
Oh, HELL no.
She doesn’t wish but she keeps interacting with the mirror. It’s giving her happy memories or visions of what her life with Ian was or could have been like. She’s more and more attracted to the mirror’s power and what peace it can give her. Which WE know is a scam but Annika doesn’t know that.
It gets to a point where the mirror’s evil is starting to influence Annika’s thoughts. She starts getting saucy with her insults toward bitch ho and the creepy guys. It’s like what she wants to happen to them actually happens. When Chad is the last man standing, the mysterious Countess shows up.
During an active hurricane.
Anyway, she decides to expo dump on Annika and Chad, helping them to realize the mirror is evil. But it’s also some kind of gateway between the past and the present, heaven and hell. And it needs a protector, a champion to get people to use it.
*side eyes Fredrick*
Finally Annika has had enough of Fredrick and his manipulation. She realizes no one is actually dead because no one in this place is real so everyone running around doesn’t actually exist. With this Annika realizes she can save Ian by demanding (the mirror? Fredrick? WHO THE FUCK KNOWS AT THIS POINT?) he live and screeching that Fredrick has no power over her!
It seems that in her memory of events last year, Ian hadn’t actually died before she passed out. So she figures if she goes back to that moment, she can save him. Which, if the mirror is a gateway in time and space, it’s possible she could do this.
And guess what? After Fredrick disappears, she wakes back up a year ago, during the attack. And as she’s lying there, staring at Ian, he coughs up a bit of blood but he’s alive! So her wish came true but at a heavy cost. Annika dies instead, at peace knowing that Ian lived.
Intermission
Well, damn. I was not expecting the emotional investment this movie got from me. I’m not going to lie, I honestly got some goosebumps at the end and was shocked by how much I cared about Annika and Ian.
Good job, writers Annette Cascone, Gina Cascone, and Paulette Victor-Lifton. Paulette also directed so that just ads another kudos to her!
While Mirror Mirror 4 didn’t take the same spicy turn as #3, I’m pretty happy about that. The last film felt disconnected from the franchise and this one brought it back in. Even though Billy Drago was in this and the third film, his character was so different in the final installment that I was never reminded of the sexy third movie.
Now, while this movie is better than the last, it’s still not great. The opening credit special effects seemed very dated and cheap. Kind of like using the free graphics program that came with the computer your dad bought you for school. And while the lightening effects used in the one scene didn’t look terrible (they could have been simple optical effects, not CGI), it really made the film look early 90s.
Practical effects were fine. I like that they didn’t do too many straight-on lingering shots at the monster from the mirror. Made for a better scare than possibly seeing a cheap rubber mask and hands. I’m not saying they were! But you can’t really tell while watching this…unless you pause the stream or DVD and then get REEEEAL close to the screen. My guess is they were not super detailed or well made.
Acting in Mirror Mirror 4 was pretty horrendous, as expected. I never go into a lower budget film thinking I’m about to witness history in the making. Kim Mai Guest as Annika was fine. If you look at her IMDB credits, aside from this movie, one other in 1991, and one ep of a tv show from ’98, all her 163 acting credits are from video game voice work, or English version voice work of tv and animated films.
That is hella cool.
Everyone else was either just kinda there or chewing the scenery. Just the character development in general made nearly every single side character so despicable, you didn’t even hate them. You just felt indifferent and wished they’d get off the screen already.
Of course, the main exception to this was Billy Drago. Fucking hell I love that guy. It’s sad that’s he’s gone but we have so many gems he left behind so we can enjoy his screen time as often as we’d like. As the mysterious Fredrick, he was a cross between Mr. Miyagi and Mephistopheles. So smooth, very gentle philosophies to put Annika at ease, all with that underlying sliminess that only the audience can see.
Cinematography and set design were fine. Nothing extraordinary. The movie came out in 2000 but it makes sense that it still feels and looks like it’s from the 90s. I do appreciate that I never saw a rogue boom mic or crew member caught on camera.
Other than the sneaky emotional investment they got out of me for Annika and Ian, this flick is just kinda…there. Nothing special; nothing overtly terrible or offensive. It’s just a…what do the kids say today? A nothing burger.
Which is disappointing but at the same time, I don’t really care, either.
Final Curtain
As of a few years ago, this IS the final film of the Mirror Mirror franchise. Not sure why anyone would be clamoring for more, but I don’t always have a finger on the pulse of fandoms. I’m glad that Mirror Mirror 4 was better than the third film. I’d hate for this series to wrap up on a shit show. And while I’d never tell anyone that any film after the 1990 original is a complete waste, I would say to check this out just to witness Billy Drago’s performance. Otherwise, if you’re not feeling it….meh. You can skip it.
2 margaritas (out of 5)