Mirror, Mirror (

1990

) ½

In the 1980s and 1990s, they used to air all sorts of PSAs aimed at teens to fix some perceived societal crisis. It was the age of the after school special propaganda reel, where impressionable young minds would be shown the horrors of drinking, drugs, and other illicit past-times. Sometimes, these took the form of stand-alone mini-movies; other times it was just “very special” episodes of an ongoing franchise where a new character would be introduced only to be tragically cut down by whatever moral blight was in the crosshairs this week. Most of these were pretty tame affairs, but occasionally the movement produced some off-the-wall nonsense like Mazes and Monsters (1982) that purported that D&D and LARPing were gateways to untold madness and depravity. I was old enough to catch the tail-end of this movement when it had essentially been proven that teens weren’t going to stop drinking/drugging/fucking just because the TV told them to, and the only media companies that bothered were virtue signaling or just plain out of touch. The “very special” episodes were even mocked by Clone High, a show that claimed every episode was a “very special” episode, and frequently indulged in the absurdly maudlin. Yet, I still remember quite a few shows that warned us of the danger of bullying, even some that went so far as to claim that not standing up to bullies made you a bully as well. I mention all this because Mirror, Mirror plays out at times like it’s a deliberate reaction against all these anti-bully PSAs. Don’t befriend the weird new girl at school, the film says unapologetically, it might wind up getting someone killed by the demon that lives in her mirror.

The weird new girl is Megan Gordon, a recent transplant from Beverly Hills dragged across the country by her recently widowed mother. The pair moves into an old house that according to local legend was the site, 100 years ago, of witchcraft and murder. The old furniture is all packed up when the last family moves out and sold to an antiques dealer, except for a mirror in Megan’s new room that somehow evades the movers. Megan takes a shine to the weird old mirror and asks to keep it. Unbeknownst to her, the mirror is housing whatever evil spirit/demon (this movie is not going to give us a coherent cosmology Christian or otherwise) caused the ruckus 100 years ago. Following its eviction from its mortal host, the spirit settled inside the mirror. Now in Megan, it has found another potential host.

Megan is a goth, and consequently, she sports a wardrobe of eccentric clothing that would make her the envy Lydia Deetz from Beetlejuice (1988). I would assume that anyone dressing so intentionally outrageously would have a thicker skin about the occasional snide remark whispered behind her back but that is not the case. On Megan’s first day at her new school the designated snotty popular girl, Charlene, and her less popular tag-along Kim make a few comments about Megan’s wardrobe. The comments aren’t even anything all that mean even, given the at times, downright sadistic nature of high school girls. This minor criticism sends Megan running out of class, and cowering in the bathroom. Not everybody at this school is a total jerk though, and another girl, name Nikki goes to check up on her. Nikki quickly befriends the misfit outcast, despite the cautioning advice of her boyfriend Ron, who doesn’t want her to get tangled up in the melodrama of another charity case. It sounds like she’s done this sort of thing before, with rather unpleasant results.

As Megan is going through the tedious routine of High School she begins to discover that her new mirror is granting her strange powers. When she is pissed off at her math teacher during a test (who hasn’t been there?) she wishes the old bastard would choke. All of the sudden the teacher starts to sputter and cough and can’t manage to catch his breath, his asthma inhaler does nothing to help and paramedics have to rush him to the hospital. When she’s fed up with her mom’s new boyfriend, a pet mortician with a rocking ponytail, she wishes he would eat worms. Sure enough, before his very eyes, his dinner turns into a plate of maggot-ridden offal. Evidentially this guy is better adjusted than his unfortunate hairstyle would suggest. He calmly gets up and quietly excuses himself from the table, saying that he thinks he’s having another one of his Vietnam flashbacks and says it would probably be best for everyone if he went back home until the episode passes. Seriously, who remains that composed when they are hallucinating? Most concerning is the result of her wish to see her dead father again, which brings the reanimated corpses of the man to her room late at night.

So we have a pretty classic Carrie (1976) formula in place here: Teenage social outcast has a difficult relationship with her single mom and a supernatural power. The majority of her high school classmates treat her like shit, with one exception that regards her as a charity case. Now, all we’re missing is the menstruation imagery for the complete set. Amusingly, the film doesn’t pretend that we haven’t seen Carrie (1976) before and even throws out a small shout out to the earlier film. In one scene, Kim and Charlene are planning to pull a small prank on Megan. Charlene’s boyfriend thinks it’s pointlessly cruel and that the two girls should lay off, to which Charlene responds: “It's not like we're going to cover her in pig's blood or anything.” However, this is a deliberate misleading of the audience. Despite the film’s first two acts, the conclusion of Mirror, Mirror diverges wildly from Carrie (1976). Carrie is humiliated publically and then lashes out at everyone and everything around her in a whirlwind of nihilistic, but nonetheless understandable, violence. Megan’s arch follows a different path in the last act of Mirror, Mirror. Once she becomes confident in the power her mirror grants her, she is quickly corrupted by it. For example, when Charlene is alone in the school shower for a quick cheesecake reel, Megan murders her by venting steam into the shower room. It’s a slow and painful way of killing someone, and the really crazy part is that Megan does it not for vengeance against her tormentor, but rather to help Nikki win the school election. Evidentially, Nikki was behind in the polls because Charlene kept shaking her massive tits at any student with a Y chromosome and this was the only way Megan could think to close the gap. Obviously, there are dozens of ways to accomplish the same goal without resorting to sadistic murder, particularly when you have access to magical powers (maybe wish for Nikki to gain a cup-size or two). From there, Megan’s actions only get crazier and more sadistic. The key difference between Megan and Carrie is that Megan’s powers are coming from something demonic, or at least evil rather than just being a natural phenomenon like Carrie’s. As Megan uses the powers the evil spirit she’s channeling is getting stronger, and she is slowly being corrupted by it. She cannot use evil powers without succumbing to the same evil.

Of all the characters, it is the small support role of Ron that steals the show. He’s like a better-looking, cleanlier dressed incarnation of Bluto from Animal House (1978). Both characters are exemplars of the old comedic stock character: The Fat Boy. Literally every action of his can be traced to some base animal instinct, usually eating and screwing. Yet unlike in real life, his larger than life appetites never cause anyone any harm. Indeed, obeying his appetites usually leads him in the correct direction. He constantly tries to steer Nikki away from the potential disaster that is getting involved in any way with Megan. In one memorable scene, he separates the two girls by leading Nikki off to the closet to make out, becoming more and more frustrated as Nikki keeps talking to her friend. It doesn’t hurt that the script gives him most of the common sense and all of the best lines. A moment where he narrates himself making a massive (this thing is the size of his head) sandwich to the applause of an imagined crowd is particularly charming. Though, it does make me suspect that he might be stoned for the entire runtime of the film.

So, let me make sure I’ve got this straight: Charlene is a well-endowed girl who uses her considerable “charms” to sway men to her point of view. And she dies in the middle of a thoroughly gratuitous shower scene. Megan is a girl so emotionally unstable, that she mistakes a small act of kindness for lifelong devotion and begins to kill for her new friend. And Nikki would have been infinitely better served by listening to the advice of her boyfriend and not getting involved in the life of the much put upon new girl. Thank goodness this movie was written by two women (Annette Cascone and Gina Cascone, sisters I presume) and directed by a third (Marina Sargenti) otherwise I might think all this rather sexist. It just goes to show you that H.L. Mencken was on to something when he said “Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.” Of course, this movie is no more misogynistic than any of the countless others that old tickets with promises of tits and blood, which is to say not at all. It’s just amusing how quickly the criticism dries up based on the immutable characteristics of the filmmakers.