(1980)***
Years after Lacey and Willy kill their mother’s sadistic lover, they are both still haunted by this traumatic event. Willy is mute and terrified of mirrors because the murder took place in front of a large mirror. Lacey suffers from terrible flashbacks and nightmares and as if that was not enough, the evil spirit of the man they murdered periodically possesses her. Fed up with Lacey’s nightmares and overall strange behavior, her husband takes her to a psychotherapist in an attempt to purge these childhood demons once and for all. Lacey’s shrink recommends that she return to her childhood home and confront her fears (a rare instance where a movie shrink gets things right!). After reluctantly agreeing to this plan, she finds that the current owners are moving and she is invited in to look around. Once in the bedroom where the murder occurred, Lacey finds that the original mirror is still on the wall. Staring into the mirror, Lacey sees the man they murdered walking towards her. Grabbing a nearby chair, she shatters it into a million pieces. Lacey’s husband is mortified by her behavior and cleans up the mirror shards, placing them into a bag. He takes the shards and mirror frame back home where he reassembles it like a jigsaw puzzle. In another appropriate therapeutic effort, he hangs the mirror up as a means of exposure therapy for Lacey and Willy. Shattering the mirror, however, apparently released the evil spirit trapped within. It is here where the film kicks into overdrive and anyone who comes in contact with the mirror or any of its shards are brutally killed in a surprisingly violent manner.
I bought this film in the supermarket for $1. I had never heard of it before and assumed that it must be fairly unwatchable. Nothing could be further from the truth! Sure it borrows heavily from the cinematography and music of Halloween as well as some Exorcist possession elements, but this is a fun, bleak movie. Also, I gave it an extra ½ star because the director had the balls to kill off arguably one of the most annoying kids in cinema history. In fact, said kid gets killed while engaged in annoying behavior, which made it doubly satisfying! I actually had to rewind and watch it again just to be certain that I had just seen what I though I had. This is only the second time I’ve ever seen a kid get killed on film, the first being the remake of The Blob.
4 comments:
So how did the kid "get it"? You can tell, I probably won't watch it anyway.
A kid got killed in High Tension though it was offscreen. Then there's the Ring girl but she comes back as a ghost. The infanticide in Omen III was pretty jaw dropping. There's one quick scene where they allude to a priest drowning a baby during his baptism.
I don't want to post the details of his death here because I don't want to spoil it for others. It was very quick, surprising, and funny. It was great because he was in the middle of being loud and annoying.
Jaws and Humanoids from the Deep both feature kid killings. Two youngsters get it in Prophecy, although one you just hear about later and the other is in a sleeping bag so all you see is feathers.
This Boogeyman goes down as the hardest flick to find a suitable picture for. Damn your one dollar supermarket purchases!
I'm impressed that you were able to find any picture for this film!
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