Into the Mirror (Geoul Sokuero)

Wraps up rather like one of the more memorable episodes of the Twilight Zone.

That final ten minutes and indeed the opening ten minutes are the best things about this film. There are three creative strands competing for our attention in the rather convoluted mid-section: a bog standard Asian horror whodunnit (who pissed off the vengeful spook?); a more complex and certainly creepier examination of the pyschology of mirror-use; and lastly, symmetry and inverted representation as an (overexploited) design concept.

As with Phone it seems that Into the Mirror was intended to satisfy two audiences at once, the cereberal and well, the mainstream, with the result that there's simply too much going on to make dramatic sense and the tension levels flag markedly at times.

Looks like a Hollywood remake is in the pipeline and perhaps, for a change, there's a chance that an American production will improve on the original by untangling the concept.

It would be hard to better the twist at the end, though I was left suspecting that perhaps there's an entirely different, more complex story for which this would be the ideally disturbing pay-off.