The Mayflower store has been destroyed, but there is a plan to relocate the store to New Orleans, and the executives were even able to save one of the store's prize mirrors and transport it down South.
The store's CEO, Jack Matherson (William Katt, whom most might remember as The Greatest American Hero) is overseeing the grand opening, and accompanying him are the branch's head honchos like Jenna (Christy Romano), the Vice President of Operations Ryan (Jon Michael Davis) and the new Manager, Keller (Lawrence Turner). Also joining the team is Jack's son, Max (Nick Stahl, Terminator 3 and Sin City).
After the store's previous nightwatchman, Henry (Evan Jones), bugs out and quits, Jack decides to hire his son to look after the place at night. Max has had quite a few issues over the past few years. Since the death of a close loved one, a death he believes is his fault, he has been going to a psychiatrist almost every day, and while he seems to have reached a turning point, he still isn't quite comfortable out in public.
Then, the strange attacks start happening. Not only do people suddenly start turning up dead, but for some reason Max sees their deaths in the Mayflower mirror. It isn't long before he notices the connection between his visions and the deaths, and his apparent knowledge of the suspected murders puts him in the sights of the investigating officers.
There is a noticeably different mood and feel to Mirrors 2 over its predecessor. For one, the movie doesn't just focus on one character spending all night in an abandoned shell of a building. Instead, Max's character has a lot of interaction with others, and it is through those interactions that he finds out exactly what is going on.
Mirrors 2 actually follows the original Korean film, Into the Mirror much more closely than the theatrical film released in 2008. Not only are a lot of the elements the same, but many of the characters have direct counterparts in the foreign film. It is pretty obvious that the makers of Mirrors 2 wanted to pay a lot of fan service to those who followed Into the Mirror. To help prove the fact, a copy of the original film, subtitled of course, is included on one side of the DVD disc included in this combo pack.
Mirrors 2 also comes with a pair of featurettes. One talks about the making of the film in general, while the other goes into the special effects behind the various (gory) deaths. There is also a Blu-ray exclusive special feature. This is a picture-in-picture mode that occasionally allows you to see the world from the other side of the mirror. In truth, this seems to be little more than a flip of the film and some color adjustments along with various After Effects filters applied, but its amusing nonetheless.
I did find the high definition version of the film to be much crisper than the copy on the DVD, and given that a lot of the visual effects were done with practicals, as opposed to full CG like a bigger budgeted picture would have used, a lot of the effect-driven scenes upscale well. Though there are a few that don't look quite right in either definition, namely an early killing where we see in the mirror a character pulling off her own head.
All that being said, Mirrors 2 is much better than I had expected. The inclusion of both high and standard definitions of the film, along with a copy of Into the Mirror, should encourage more fans than not, that an all-out purchase is a good deal over simply renting it.
