Mirrors

Pretty, young Marianne is vacationing with her husband in a New Orleans French Quarter hotel. Nightmares involving mirrors and faces she's seen during her visit begin to plague her, but her suspicions of something sinister are roused when another guest from the hotel ends up mysteriously killed. The following night, her husband dies in his sleep from an evident asthma attack, and Marianne becomes convinced that forces of voodoo are pitted against her. Predictable terror ensues in this pedestrian thriller of the "is it all real, or is she nuts" variety.

It would be a bit of a stretch to call MIRRORS a critically *good* film, yet it does succeed suitably in perpetuating a creeping buildup of tension, and the performances(namely from Kitty Winn and Peter Donat) are fairly solid. Despite being erratically paced and somewhat inconclusive, it draws a voltage of lurking menace from the emotional and psychological duress of its central character...an indwelling nerve-center which fuels a troubling atmospheric carriage variably reminiscent in tone to LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH. Intimacy with the protagonist during her spiral of cruelly-induced confusion is ably effectuated, and marks the chief distinction which saves MIRRORS from sinking like an iron anchor.

4.5/10. THE SKELETON KEY(2005) incorporates several very similar key elements.