re:mote voices

Title: Into The Mirror

Cast: Ji-tae Yu, Myeong-min Kim, Ju-bong Gi, Myeong-su Kim

Director: Kim Seong-ho

Into The Mirror is the second last of the 2004 Asia Extreme season put on by Tartan Films and UGC Cinemas. Another Korean horror film, which like Phone before it manages to provide a number of options for what might be going on. Woo Yeong-min was a rising star in the Seoul police force, until he mistakenly shot his partner during a hostage situation. The result was that he quit the police force, and was made head of security for the mall run by his uncle. The mall has been closed for some time due to a fire, but is about to open any day now with much associated pomp.

Unfortunately the opening is marred by the death of a woman who was working late. Which is the opening sequence, so that the viewers see what appears to be the woman murdered by her own reflection, but appears to be suicide to management. However the police disagree, the woman’s throat was slit in such a way that she couldn’t have done it herself – so the police descend on the building – holding back the mall’s opening, and complicating Woo’s life, as these are his old colleagues. Of course this is not the only death, and over a number of days the bodies mount up – Woo spotting hand prints on mirrors at each crime scene, and increasingly catching glimpses of a suspicious woman.

As the film goes on it becomes clear that only one actual employee of the company died in the fire, the rest were workmen – with each of the new victims having worked directly with the dead woman. Woo drinks heavily; waking from blackouts with no recollection of what has gone on in the meantime, and there is the discovery that the dead woman has a sister with a history of mental problems. So the question becomes is there something supernatural reaching through the mirrored walls of the refurbished mall, is there a much more mundane explanation?

In a series of Asian horror films we’ve had the haunted video tape/television, the threat of phone calls from a cursed mobile, and the cursed house. With Into The Mirror we are clearly in the same kind of territory, but with the idea of the mirror there seems to be a lot more scope for half glimpsed figures and teasing glances of killers – which are played to a strong effect in this film.