Behind the Couch

2007 Dir. Pablo Proenza When her family moves into a new home, photographer Deborah (Lisa Vidal) gradually begins to suspect sinister things are stirring from the house’s past. She catches glimpses of shadowy figures and doorways that aren't there in the mirrors and reflective surfaces. When she talks to her new neighbours she discovers that the previous owner, a famous artist, vanished in mysterious circumstances. Deborah is further convinced something evil lurks within the house as everyone she photographs dies in unnatural circumstances. Is Deborah experiencing a nervous breakdown? Or are there actually evil spirits trapped in the glass surfaces of her new home, waiting to pounce into our world? The mirror has featured heavily throughout horror cinema as a source of danger and fear. Mirrors are often used to address ideas of fractured identity, fear of one’s self, and psychological breakdown. A common visual motif in films in which someone is suffering from psychologica...

Following on from 2008’s Kiefer Sutherland starring thriller Mirrors , which was based on the hair-raising Korean film Into the Mirrors, Mirrors 2 is a supernatural horror starring Emmanuelle Vaughier ( Saw II ) and Nick Stahl ( Carnivale ). Like its predecessor, it looks set to exploit all kinds of spectrophobic (the fear of mirror images) notions as it follows the story of Max, a recovering addict struggling to come to terms with the car crash that killed his fiancé. Riddled with guilt and determined to try and make a new life for himself Max takes a job as night-time security guard in the Mayflower department store, but as his nightshifts begin he sees visions of a mysterious woman in the store’s mirrors. When he sets out to discover who she is, Max’s investigation reveals that the seemingly normal department store holds a dark secret and a bloody past. A series of horrifying and brutal murders ensues before long, and everyone connected with the store meet with nasty deaths. Can...

2008 Dir. Alexandre Aja When he is suspended from duty after accidentally shooting his partner, former NYPD detective Ben Carson (Kiefer Sutherland) gets a job as a security guard at a deserted department store. Determined to put his life back on track, kick his alcoholism and rejoin his estranged family, Ben soon becomes obsessed with the mirrors in the building and the strange visions they seemingly reflect. With no one to believe his wild stories, he sets out to solve the mystery of what lurks within the mirrors before his mind unravels completely… After kaleidoscopic opening credits and a rather unsettling and menacing scene set in the underground, what could have been a supremely creepy and subtly chilling film, soon descends into cheap jumps, cardboard characters and some really quite lazy writing that explains everything, because, you know, we’re just too dumb to be able to follow the story or piece together some information. Director Aja doesn’t display anything that ...