The spate of horror flicks coasting the phenomenal Korean cinema revival has, in truth, brought mixed blessings. If you felt that Phone marked something of a nadir in the increasingly tired Ringu-aping sub-genre, prepare to gasp at the wholly derivative (if occasionally effective) Into The Mirror. Easily the weakest link in the Tartan Asia Extreme season, this is one mongrel puppy of a movie – a cop thriller, a psychological horror and a ghost story. Now, we may be generally appreciative of genre-bending around these parts, but this just doesn’t hold water. Or scares.
After causing the accidental death of his partner, Wu Young Min (Ji Tae Yu) quits the police and goes to work for his uber-capitalist uncle as head of security in Dreampia, a shopping mall so large and gauche you wonder why people aren’t standing on corners shouting at passers-by to stop buying shit and go think about the plight of the Mong people in Laos, or some such. This monstrosity is currently being rebuilt after a fatal fire five years earlier (to the day, naturally), and while there’s a bit of a kafuffle brewing about the victims not being adequately compensated, such considerations are quickly eclipsed by a series of bizarre suicides.
Is the fact that all the gruesome deaths take place beside a mirror somehow relevant? Or that the victims committed suicide with the wrong hands? (Just like in a mirror, perchance?) Is the clue maybe in the title? You betcha. (Oh, and before you can say Enter The Dragon, there’s a Lady From Shanghai ‘Am I shooting the target or the hall of mirrors?’ standoff.)
While the film works better as a schlock cop thriller than a horror movie, there’s enough craft and atmosphere to keep you awake, if not quite enthralled. The delightfully trashy B-movie dabble into mirror mythology is also worth a look, but as cultural markers go, this is closer to Dollar’s Mirror than Tarkovsky’s.