Movie review: Upon reflection, there are few thrills in 'Mirror'

Kiefer Sutherland -- what happened to you, man? You used to be cool. We expected you to take over as your generation's movie tough guy.

But "Mirrors"? There's got to be more of an excuse for this than "This is all I could line up for my hiatus from '24'" or "There was a writers' strike coming. I was in a hurry."

"Mirrors" is about demons that try to suck souls from this world into their world, behind the silvered glass. It's a grisly, high-gloss horror picture with barely a scare in it. Sutherland is better than this. Or should be.

He plays Ben, a recovering alcoholic, a police detective on long-term leave because of a death he blames himself for. His marriage (to a cororner played by Paula Patton) is on the rocks. He's living with his bartender sister (Amy Smart). And he has taken a job as night watchman at a burned-out hulk of a department store where a lot of people died in a fire. It was a mental hospital before it was a department store, and, yes, they give that fact away early on.

Something is in the mirrors. We've already seen, in graphic detail, the previous night watchman slit his own throat with a shard of glass. Ben sees horrific visions, first of himself, then of those who died in the fire.

It's not just in the architecturally absurd store. He sees them in his bathroom, in the rear-view mirror in his car, in puddles, on shiny doorknobs and TV screens. And if he sees them, they can get at him and those close to him.

Alexandre Aja ( "The Hills Have Eyes, P2") tosses the odd cheap jolt (pigeons fluttering out of the silence, a dog leaping against a window) in an effort to spice up what turns too quickly into a mundane tale.

Sutherland gives fair value, exploding in anger, flipping out every time he sees something that he shouldn't reflected back at him. It's not laughably bad. It's just not scary, a generally pointless thriller with motiveless murders at its heart and a most unsatisfactory resolution.

Sutherland might want to reflect on this. He should have moved on from this level of junk movie years ago, even if this was all he could line up for his TV hiatus, even with a writer's strike coming.