Good lord, so much bad luck...

I think, hopefully without seeming too terribly desperate in my search for something remarkable about this film, that I have to come to Paula Patton. She is lovely. I won't be crass about it but I do find her to be quite wonderful in every sense of the word and I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised to find her name featured in the opening credits. I didn't go nuts for Kiefer but he really was as far as my investigation into the film went. I saw him and said ok. So finding out Paula was in the movie was quite a boon, especially after I watched a good bit of the movie. She's a wonderful actress who hasn't ever seemed to find the spotlight I feel she deserved. She was quite serviceable in this movie. Her acting was sensible and restrained in the right ways. I will say it did seem like an unlikely pairing. I had to look and there's only shy of a 9 year age gap but it does seem palpable in a sense. They don't have a ton of chemistry but I'm not really putting a lot of that blame on Paula. Maybe that's unfair of me but at this point, she's really kind of my anchor for something good to say about this movie.

I suppose really there's no reason to prolong jumping into what didn't work for me, which was most of it. Again, not a horrible film but just tremendously formulaic and tiring. Hollywood is really heinous about that fact when it comes to horror movies. If any one thing does even a bit of business, studios become bent on ripping off the equation and passing off their version of it. Pick literally any object and make it haunted. The story is a tragic one of presumably a child or a woman or both that were the victim of some horrific event. An evil spirit sprinkled on top and a reasonable cast according to the budget and the thing kind of writes itself. It's not as egregious as some truly wretched horror films. It's just sort of there. That's my biggest complaint. There was nothing to ever be excited about in this movie. The jump scares weren't even cheap. They were just lame. That was the running theme. Everything was just this watered down version of elements of other horror movies you don't care enough to remember. There's undoubtedly one about a haunted camera of some sort. How about a toy embodying a dismembered child's spirit. I seem to recall one with Jessica Alba and perhaps a prosthetic eye or something of that variety? Whatever the case, this is just the unflavored mashed potatoes of the industry. It has no flavor and just takes up space on the plate.

I will say my biggest beef is with Sutherland. I had to stop at one point and come to the realization that this was most definitely a paycheck movie. He's not my favorite actor but he's a MUCH better actor than what we got here. It might not have been a great script. It might not have been a seasoned or apt director. But he's better than this performance. Every time he was supposed to fly off the handle I cringed. Not because it was such a magnificent performance. Because it seemed so profoundly forced that it was like nails on a chalkboard. I think that's why I struggled so hard. I wanted to like him because he's a good actor. But he played Ben Carson (actually remembered this time) as such a spectacular douche bag that I had little care for the preservation of his strained relationship with his wife and children. Why any of them still want to be with him is a mystery. He's insufferable. He flies off the handle. He's been kicked off the police force but has decided to become a night watchman at a burned down building. Are your prospects really that slim? If I'm not a cop then I'm basically either guarding a haunted ashen shell of a building or cleaning up trash at a gas station. Just nothing in between there? So I was just disappointed that a movie that happened couldn't have been a little bit better simply by him trying at all.

I think in the end, this movie is a C-. Maybe I'm being too kind. Maybe it does deserve to fall all the way into a D category movie. I don't know. I think it just felt so middle of the road like it wasn't just bad like it was offensive to the general sensibility that a horror movie should have. It just existed. My complaints might be pointed but they aren't severe. I think for them to be as such, there would have to be stakes to the film and they went out of their way to ensure there weren't any. It just was. That's the best thing I can say about this movie. It existed. Somebody saw fit to make this movie and people did that. I'm sure for some people they enjoyed it. It wasn't overtly bad. I almost would have enjoyed it more if it was bad. Then at least it would have had some intention and missed the mark. This film just seemed bent on achieving a run time. That's about it. So perhaps I should have been harsher but it's a middle of the road movie with some problematic elements to me. If Kiefer would have been any kind of normal and Smart would have had some real point of being there and the story would have had ANY part of it that was even remotely interesting, it might have been a C or C+. But it was a C movie that made enough mistakes to warrant a = with it.

And that's our last Monday in October. Little bit of a down turn but haven't lost our footing. I'm thinking I need to be a little more deliberate in my pick tomorrow to ensure we get back into either B or even A territory at least once this week. That would be nice. I've been hearing good things about Clayface and while I don't like body horror, I may break down and see that one. Or maybe I'll finally catch Obsession since everyone seems to love that one. Though my hesitation is that at present, it's a Schrödinger's movie in that it's both really bad and really good since I haven't watched it yet. If I don't end up liking it, which I feel like I actually have a slight possibility for that being the case since a lot of it feels like cringe exploited as horror and I'm not sure how I feel about that, then I'm in the considerable minority on this film. So I'll have to think about it. Either way, we've got a few more days left so lets hopefully finish strong. As for now, that's Mirrors in a nutshell. We'll see what makes the screen tomorrow. Until then, I'll catch you on the flip side.