It’s In The Blood

It’s In The Blood (2012)

Dir by Scooter Downey

Written by Scooter Downey and Sean Elliott

Starring Sean Elliott, Lance Henriksen

I know what you're thinking: "Great, this poster is lying to me already by pretending Lance Henriksen in the main character here when you and I both know that's certainly not the case." Well friend, you skepticism is not unfounded, but he's actually in more than a handful of scenes this time, at least. He's not the main character, and there's probably no artistic reason why his face should be this big when the actual star appears (maybe) only as a blurry shadow at the top. But he's definitely the co-lead.

             Well, after the refreshing novelty of reviewing an actual good movie in DON’T GO INTHE HOUSE, I guess it’s time to get back to my bread and butter: writing lengthy reviews to warn you off of watching ridiculously obscure direct-to-video crap you never heard of and were definitely never going to watch in the first place. Which means, it’s that magical time of the year where I give a modern Lance Henriksen movie a shot, on the assumption that, come on, a guy makes 500 movies a year, at least one of ‘em’s gotta be halfway decent just through sheer statistical probability, right?

            Maybe, but surprise surprise, if there is a good one out there somewhere, IT’S IN THE BLOOD ain’t it. In fact, it’s a bunch of hot garbage. How hot is this garbage? The main character’s name is “October.” I don’t think they ever mention his last name, so I’m going to go ahead and assume it’s “Blood,” which would at least help the title make more sense. Now, I admit, some extensive Google searching does reveal a handful of real live humans who somehow live life with the absurd name of “October.” But the most prominent one seems to be the daughter of the bassist from Slipknot, which is about the level of taste we’re dealing with here. I mean, for fuck’s sake.

Look at this guy, I mean, Jesus.

October T. Blood is played by Sean Elliott (“Frat Guy” in THE LIBRARIAN III: CURSE OF THE JUDAS CHALICE) who also co-wrote the screenplay. I never saw him play the Frat Guy, but I can safely say that as a screenwriter, he probably doomed himself as an actor from the get-go, because October has about four characters’ worth of gimmicks stuffed into one: he’s apparently supposed to be 1) some kind of brooding hunk (he’s got a cut-off sleeve, like Ash? But he looks kind of like Adam Scott) who is 2) hitchhiking his way back to his podunk hometown after being away for some time (just a year, according to the Netflix blurb, but it surely seems like it must have been more?) and it’s clear that he left after 3) his beloved girlfriend Iris (Rose Sirna, a minor part in a zero-reviews-on-IMDB movie called LAMB OF GOD* [follow me to the footnote for the plot description, because you need to hear this]) died under circumstances that are not initially clear to us and 4) also, she was his adopted sister, so what in the hell, is this fucking Wuthering Heights up in here? There’s nine billion people on Earth dude, can we try not to fuck someone in our immediate family, October, Jesus Christ? And this whole incident caused him to be 5) estranged from his redneck sheriff father (Lance Henriksen, HARBINGER DOWN, various Pumpkinheads, 56,000 other movies). Also, 6) he’s some kind of genius savant with a photographic memory and perfect recall, who can instantly summon to mind every page of every book he’s ever so much as glanced at during his entire life. Which 7) is why he is a expert field medic and survivalist, because he read how to do it in books and remembers every detail perfectly. (Also, incidentally, it’s the only reason for this bizarre and specific character detail. Apparently this is the only way they could think of to establish that he’d eventually be able to bandage a wound and sharpen some sticks.)

Bear in mind, that’s not the plot of the movie; all that is established in the first five minutes or so. If there is any actor alive who could play a role that overloaded, Sean Elliott is certainly not him. Lance Henriksen might be, actually, but unfortunately he’s stuck with the dad role, and wouldn’t you know it, the screenwriters were so busy adding things to October’s character that they forgot to give him any clear characteristics of any kind.

This is made clear before we even see his face, because the first thing that happens when October gets back to his family farm is he finds his beloved childhood dog stuck in a bear trap. He crouches down and comforts the whimpering animal while he flashes back to sunnier, idyllic childhood days when the adorable pup first came into his life. Then, offscreen, someone blasts the dog to bloody pieces with what is presumably a full-sized howitzer, dousing the reminiscing prodigal son with blood. And then his dad walks up behind him and mumbles that he had to put the unfortunate pooch out of his misery. He later explains that he set up bear traps everywhere for some reason (coyotes? I can’t remember) and just figured the dog wouldn’t be dumb enough to step in one.

Now, this would be a perfectly reasonable introduction to this character if they were trying to establish that he was some kind of unhinged backwoods psychopath. But instead, they act like blowing up this dude’s childhood dog with a shotgun without warning while he’s leaning right over it was a completely reasonable, if unfortunate, response to the situation. The movie posits this incident as a perfect encapsulation of the failure to communicate between the two men. As in, one of them thinks it’s necessary to blast a giant hole in his kid’s dog with his shotgun without warning while he’s kneeling over it, spraying him with viscera, and the other thinks maybe don’t do that, or, maybe, acknowledges that its completely reasonable but is still sulky about it because he’s a big bitchy baby. But then, aren’t they both a little bit right? Apparently so, because rest of the movie is entirely about them getting lost in the woods and then bonding and resolving their differences, all while we gradually flash back to the tragedy that initially pushed them apart.

Oh, one thing about that bonding: while they do it, they are occasionally attacked by this weird crawling thing that I interpreted as an alien mummy dog (the credits just call it “monster”). When Daddy Blood first gets a look at it, it’s got some kind of PREDATOR-style camo mode on, which seems to me makes it an alien, but who knows? He’s so shocked at the sight that he falls backwards off a cliff, breaking his leg and trapping them in the woods. Subsequently, the malignant critter’s MO will be to suddenly create an eerie and inexplicable mist, and then crawl out of it and briefly menace them while remaining mostly off-screen, and then fuck off back into the darkness so they can get back to elliptically talking about the tragic events which cost the life of October’s sister/ fuck buddy.

Here’s the weird thing: they spend a lot of time talking around this incident without ever talking directly about it. The movie bafflingly posits the backstory as this big mystery it has to slowly dole out to the audience in flashback form over the course of the entire movie, even though it’s clear from like, flashback #2 that a creepy sheriff's deputy (Jimmy Gonzalez, a lengthy career of minor roles playing cops in big movies including LOGAN, MACHETE KILLS, and TAKEN 3, clearly relishing his rare chance to play a cop who’s also a raving psychopath) is murderously obsessed with Iris and there’s literally only one way this can turn out. Which is exactly how it does turn out, and yet the movie acts like it’s some kind of huge game-changing revelation which suddenly explains everything (the only new information we learn is how unpleasant her death was, and having a pretty extended, sadistic rape scene is way, way too much for a movie this dumb and bad, making it seedy and repellent as well as boring.)**

Anyway, this irritating and borderline insulting flashback structure effectively prevents the only two characters in the movie from ever substantively discussing the only relevant conflict until the very end, which makes for some very strained, unnatural conversations (and the movie is almost all conversations). But naturalism was pretty much already ruled out by one other noteworthy factor: while they happily jabber away about their shared past while awkwardly avoiding all specific detail, they somehow manage to entirely avoid the topic of the goddam alien mummy dog that’s trying to kill them! They seem to agree that there’s some kind of danger, but unless I missed it neither of them ever specifically addresses the fact that every once in awhile, without warning, some kind of weird mist will appear and a bitey critter from another dimension or Hell or whatever will ineffectually try to get at them. Nobody asks what in God’s name is going on, or wonders if this is a metaphor or if this is an alien or whatever, or seems surprised at all that this is happening. Not once. It’s so completely bizarre that it would almost be interesting if the movie had literally anything else going on.

            Henriksen is giving 110%, as he always does, and he’s so good that you might almost be fooled into caring about their stupid non-drama, but his sole co-star is only operating at about -56%, so it averages out to around 27% acting overall. Which isn’t nearly enough to make the drama worth it, not even close. And yet, that’s definitely the ONLY thing the movie is interested in. The alien attacks are so random and unrelated to any of the dialogue that it’s almost like they shot all the drama and then later decided that the only human beings indiscriminate enough to watch this movie would be horror fans, and so they went back and shot some b-roll of a couple of badly staged creature attacks to edit in. In the big climax, our hero gets attacked by some kind of unexplained distorted zombie ghouls  --including, for some reason, his girlfriend’s killer?-- but the alien mummy or whatever is nowhere to be seen, so I couldn’t tell you what the fuck is going on here. October is just such an excruciating opaque character and so wildly underacted that it honestly seems like maybe he’s supposed to be autistic or developmentally disabled or something (he does have the whole “photographic memory” thing, is that a hint?) but I don’t think so. It’s implied he’s suffering from hallucinations, but his Dad sees the monster first, so… huh, I dunno, maybe that’s not important? Or maybe he hallucinated the whole thing and just murdered his dad? But if so I don’t know what that would mean.

I dunno man, you tell me what this is. This is about the best look we ever get at it.

 Anyway, the possibility of ever understanding this twerp, let alone caring about him, is completely nonexistent. The entire movie is about the reconciliation between son and father, but since the son’s a sulky blank and the father seems like a nice guy and is also played by Lance Henriksen, there’s just no narrative drama there at all, it just seems like this guy’s being a petulant dick to his poor old dad for no reason. The flashbacks don’t really reveal anything which deepens our understanding of their estrangement, and since the flashback structure means they can’t really discuss anything substantive about their relationship without spoiling the “mystery” anyway, their ultimate “reconciliation” is completely unmotivated. And the alien attacks, which are the only reason anyone on Earth would suffer through this garbage, are completely extraneous, not only to the dramatic conflict, but the plot itself. Literally the movie would not be affected one tiny iota by removing them (is it possible that the same writers who had to add a subplot about perfect recall to explain how a character knows how to bandage wounds couldn't think of any reason two people would be stuck in the woods together, except that one of them broke his leg after seeing an alien mummy?). Oh also, as you probably guessed, they suck. 

Not that it would really matter at this point, but it also has terrible, hyperactive editing and grotesquely unappealing color-correct photography, too. I mean, it takes genuine ingenuity to make location photography in the picturesque woods look this visually dull and ugly. What I’m trying to say I think is that this is a pretty bad movie, sorry if that wasn’t clear, before.

Lance gets to do a WHEN HARRY MET SALLY fake orgasm scene, though. You gotta like that. But I don’t think I’ll have what he’s having.

* IMDB plot description: “What if Jesus came to earth as a college student? Who would follow Him? who would be healed by Him? Who would crucify Him? A modern day version of a timeless story, this film follows Desiree, a young journalism major in desperate need of healing, as she investigates a student who rumor claims as the Messiah. Named Immanuel, this student has reported healed sickness, brought happiness, and inspired hope in the student body. After spending just a few days with him, Desiree begins to realize that sometimes rumors aren't just rumors.”

** OK, fair’s fair, we also find out that the evil deputy decided to locate his murder room in Papa Blood’s old shed, like 20 feet from the house (?), meaning Henriksen eventually hears the commotion and comes to investigate but is drunk and gets shot before he can do anything. But this only serves to make October seem like even more of a sullen little bitch, because come on, what the fuck was he supposed to do? Not be drunk on a weekend in his own house? Be prepared to walk into his shed and see an armed psychopath with two bound victims chained up?

Now THIS poster IS a blatant lie, but I think I'd much rather watch the imaginary movie it's advertising than the real one that exists.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2018 CHECKLIST!

Searching For Bloody Pictures

TAGLINE	You Can’t Escape The Wilderness Within. I’m sure that means something to someone, somewhere.
TITLE ACCURACY	The only possible interpretation is that it refers to the familial link between father and son, but genetics play no role in the plot.
LITERARY ADAPTATION?	No
SEQUEL?	None
REMAKE?	None
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN	USA
HORROR SUB-GENRE	Creature-feature, also some kind of zombie ghouls show up at the end, and it briefly gets kinda torture-porny for a while during one flashback.
SLUMMING A-LISTER?	None
BELOVED HORROR ICON?	Lance Henriksen!
NUDITY?	Don’t think so.
SEXUAL ASSAULT?	Yeah, and a pretty nasty, unpleasant one at that.
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!	No
GHOST/ ZOMBIE / HAUNTED BUILDING?	I guess some zombies? Or maybe they’re just a metaphor?
POSSESSION?	No
CREEPY DOLLS?	None
EVIL CULT?	None.
MADNESS?	Crazy stalker/killer
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?	None.
VOYEURISM?	The killer watched October and Iris bone naked outside.
MORAL OF THE STORY	If you’re going to blast somebody’s beloved dog to pieces with a shotgun, maybe at least open with “hey you might want to stand back.”

Mirror Mirror III: The Voyeur

Mirror, Mirror 3: The Voyeur (1995)

Dir. Rachel Gordon, Virginia Perfili

Written by Steve Tymon

Starring Billy Drago, Mark Ruffalo, David Naughton, Monique Parent

As you have perhaps gathered by this point, I have something of a weakness for franchises, and for grinding them out to the bitter end. Early on I reviewed the entire PUMPKINHEAD and HELLRAISER sagas, then Hammer’s FRANKENSTEIN sequence, and more recently, I watched every single fucking RINGU and JU-ON sequel, a fate which I mercificully spared you from having to suffer through with me. I also spared you from reviews of MIRROR MIRROR 1 and 2, 90’s direct-to-video filler about a haunted mirror so bereft of worth that it didn’t seem worth bringing up. But then MIRROR MIRROR 3 showed up during October, and you know I’m honor-bound to review every movie I see in October, no matter how obscure or worthless, even if it takes me a whole year like it did last year because of laziness, physical infirmary, pontification, etc.

So, lucky you! You get to hear about MIRROR MIRROR 1-3 all in one breathless, ecstatic binge, to bring you up to speed! What’s that, you say, you don’t care at all? What if I sweetened the deal a little by mentioning that beloved Hollywood superstar Mark Ruffalo (MIRROR MIRROR 2: RAVEN’S DANCE, MIRROR MIRROR 3: THE VOYEUR) is in parts 2 and 3? That do anything for ya? Probably didn’t do much for his career, but if it was reason enough for me to watch ‘em, surely it’s reason enough for you to read about ‘em?

MIRROR MIRROR 1 is mostly pretty boring, it’s just the story of a angsty high school girl (Rainbow Harvest, a couple TV movies in the 90’s*) and her dysfunctional mom (Karen Black, Robert Altman’s NASHVILLE, IT’S ALIVE III: ISLAND OF THE ALIVE) who move into a new house and discover an obviously evil mirror which gives the daughter mild Carrie-like powers to punish her enemies (including GROUNDHOG DAY alum and one-time Seagal adversary Stephen Tobolowsky) in fairly dull psychic ways. BLADE RUNNER’s William Sanderson and CELLAR DWELLER/THE TEN COMMANDMENTS Yvonne De Carlo are in there too, but there’s pretty much nothing interesting or fun there, just a low-budget no-imagination 1990’s Carrie ripoff with ugly overlit lighting like they did in the 90’s. (Alternate opinion: “I loved this movie!!! 'smiles'... Rainbow Harvest was erotic and powerful in this one. I'd have to say this movie is her best. She's all goth/punk if you will, she's hot. I like the plot, its kind of '80's but its a cool flick... I recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys Gothic erotica or just plain fun…” -- IMDB commentator Jade-30 from Florida, 18 January 2003.)

But MIRROR MIRROR 2: RAVEN’S DANCE gets interesting. It’s still ugly and cheap and garish and 90’s, but rather than just follow its predecessor’s CARRIE ripoff structure, MIRROR MIRROR 2 strikes out on its own and creates a… plot, I guess, (?) which I would argue is pretty unique. Or at least, I would argue that, were it decipherable enough to tell what it’s actually about to begin with. You know it's a pretty good movie when 50 minutes in, I was still grappling with basic questions like "wait, where is this set, exactly? Is this, like, a nunnery / mansion / dance studio / punk band practice space?" Let’s take a look at the conversation me and my stalwart franchise buddy Dan P had afterwards, trying to interpret what we had just seen:

And all that is before I even mention that Mark Ruffalo (Brian Yuzna’s THE DENTIST, in only his second film appearance) shows up as a mysterious teenager who is always sneaking into the protagonist’s (Tracy Wells, the beloved role of “Schoolchild” in GREMLINS) room at night to say ambiguous and vaguely insinuating things to her. Well, you’ve seen a movie before, so you know he’s obviously the physical personification of the evil mirror which is trying to seduce her to evil. And she knows it too, so eventually she up and stabs him. But then it turns out he’s not related to the mirror, he’s just some local weirdo who spends his time sneaking into church orphanages (?) at night and chatting up whoever he finds in an elliptical but subtly menacing way. Huh. Also Roddy McDowell is in there. And Veronica Cartwright. And William Sanderson is back as a different character, a mentally ill custodian/groundskeeper who is enlisted to gaslight our heroine and is filled with remorse and rips the heads off his extensive doll collection but then feels bad and tapes them back on. It’s a weird movie, but the more I think about it the more I’ve convinced that it may actually be some kind of dada masterpiece. Well worth your time. Thumbs up.

MIRROR MIRROR 3, our main dish this evening, continues the tradition of radically changing up the formula, in this case going even more starkly minimalist in the plot department. How do you top a movie where it’s not even clear what the basic setting is, let alone why or how any Ravens are dancing? Well, by substituting any remaining remnants of ostensible horror movie for a long string of softcore sex scenes with various nude women riding a mostly-out-frame Billy Drago (INVASION USA, THE UNTOUCHABLES), who’s a producer on the film for whatever reason. Considering how little he actually figures into these scenes (he’s barely visible laying on the floor or bed while the camera pervs out on the boobs halfheartedly swaying above him), you could probably have shot all his sex scenes (and hence, 50% of the movie or more) with a double and saved a little cash on your big star, which you would think he would be in favor of, as a producer. But fortunately Billy Drago is a real pro and knew that the actresses’ sense of the scene would be seriously undermined if he did some diva shit like that, so for the good of his craft it looks like he stayed for every one of these scenes. Probably even multiple takes, that’s what kind of artistically generous big famous movie star Billy Drago is. Good to see some professionalism in this industry from time to time.

Unfortunately --or maybe fortunately?-- it’s the only professionalism anywhere in the movie, which is a hilariously uneventful dreamy 90’s mess of empty, overlit rooms --some of them with an evil mirror in there which sits around looking evil without specifically doing anything-- and an inexplicably convoluted series of flashbacks to what I can only think to call "the real plot", since nothing actually happens during the ostensible A-story. The nothing that happens is: Billy Drago moves into a mansion which used to be owned by his former lover, who was murdered by her drug-dealer boyfriend two months earlier. He then spends his time having sex with his new girl, but also sometimes the ghost of his old girlfriend comes along to judgmentally also have sex with him, and sometimes we see flashbacks of them having sex in the past. Mark Ruffalo (A FISH IN THE BATHTUB) returns to the series in a hilariously pointless role as his shifty younger brother who also has sex with one or both of the women, so yay for you, you get to see that if you can make it to the climax of the movie. Also David Naughton (AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, THE SLEEPING CAR) is on hand, continuing his Shogun-like quest to wander the Earth proving that even when he’s only got a worthless supporting role in absolute unmitigated shit DTV 90’s softcore movies, he’s still irresistibly charming for some reason. At least he gets to walk with a cane here, that’s new for him.

Anyway, that’s it, that’s the whole movie. There’s an ongoing series of flashbacks which gradually explain the non-mystery about what happened with the drug dealer girlfriend and serve to fill the movie out to feature length, so I guess they're valuable in that regard. But I am not exaggerating when I say the movie is mainly softcore Billy Drago sex scenes where nude women straddle him in a room with that mirror from MIRROR MIRROR 1 and 2 off in the corner. I guess the mirror is probably the titular “Voyeur” here, because it spends a lot of time watching people have sex but doesn’t really do anything except sit there and provide a different motivated Point-of-view angle and occasionally leak some blood that no one notices. At the end I think it eats somebody like in PRINCE OF DARKNESS, but I can’t help but notice that to the extent there is any conflict at all here, it comes from the ghost girlfriend and her annoyance that Billy Drago is banging some blonde in her house two freakin’ weeks after she died. If the mirror is secretly the criminal mastermind behind the drug deal gone wrong or whatever I sure didn’t pick up on it, and the only official plot description I could find for the movie is only 6 lines long, so maybe they didn’t know either.

Here we see our beloved evil mirror, sort of the Freddy or Chucky of this series, ostensibly the villain but so universally beloved we can't help returning to it again and again. Remember those innocent years in the 90's when this mirror turned up everywhere and all the kids had toys of it and dressed as the mirror for Halloween and it had that hilarious series of cameos on Married With Children and all that? Man, the 90's were great.

To compensate for not having a story of any kind, co-directors Virginia Perfili (Special effects on MIRROR MIRROR, graduating to co-writer on MM2, and now co-director here, and also I think it worth noting that her one other directorial effort is a movie called “BIKINI WITNESS”) and Rachel Gordon (director of films with titles such as DUNGEONS OF DESIRE and ANIMALS ATTRACTION III, but obviously most beloved for her one acting role as “severed head” in 1991’s NUDIST COLONY OF THE DEAD) appear to have decided to make the film as visually scattershot as it is narratively sparse. Much of the film (and particularly all the flashback footage) is composed of every type of video effect 1995 was capable of producing, from stretched images to color-corrected nonsense to endless inversed footage of an unidentified car driving through Los Angeles. Fuckers think they’re Oliver Stone here. I would like to assure them definitively that they are not. It's pretty brazen stylistically though; the title doesn't even appear until a solid 18 minutes in. Power moves.

Anyway, you don’t care about that, you want to know about the Ruff. I get that. The good news is that Ruffalo’s ineffable Ruffaloisms are already in full effect by this time, and he gets all the twitchy, eccentric babbling you could want. The bad news is that Hollywood had not yet figured out how to film them so he doesn’t look like a total goofball. Probably doesn’t help that he has nothing whatsoever to do in this movie except be a small part of one sex scene. Not that anyone else is much better served. Frankly, although there is a ghost, this is barely a horror movie, and in fact barely a movie at all, let alone a MIRROR MIRROR movie, not that it would be any great shakes if it was. It’s terrible and baffling, but not in a stunning way like part 2, more in a 90’s softcore cinemax kinda way. A lot more like that, actually. You’ll be sorry to know that we have been so far unable to locate any copy of the fabled MIRROR MIRROR 4: REFLECTION (yes, that’s the real subtitle) so I cannot tell you if the series gets any better.** But I can tell you that Billy Drago returns in a new role! I’m sure that he found his experience on MIRROR MIRROR 3 so ...artistically satisfying... that he couldn’t resist returning one more time.*** This may be a really shitty franchise, but at least it’s inspiring to know that you got folks like Billy Drago out there who care enough about their craft to put in the legwork.

APPENDIX A: Alternate opinions:

“UGh [sic] all it is is these 2 people having sex for an hour and a half then some people die. The mirror does look the same as in the other films but that does not matter.” -- IMDB commentator whammy666 [very possibly Renny Harlin using a pseudonym] from United States, 13 February 2005

“Mark Ruffalo's half-naked body is the only reason I stuck with this… Literally one of the most dumbfounding experiences I've had watching a movie. Monique Parent spends virtually the entire film naked, so there's that, and Ruffalo also shows his body off at the end, serving as proof that he's always looked great.” --- IMDB commentator Robert_Lovelace from New York, NY, United States, 7 July 2016

“One point worth mentioning: Billy Drago is in it. He was absolutely great as the vicious bad guy Ramon Cota in "Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection". But let's face it: besides that, his career is not great.” --- Anonymous IMDB commentator from Belgium, 23 February 2010

*IMDB Trivia: Many are surprised to know that her real name is indeed "Rainbow Harvest".

**It doesn’t have enough ratings to even list an IMDB star ranking, so I don’t think I’m the only one who can’t seem to find it. I think it may well have played only a time or two on cable and never become available for home viewing.

***EDIT: in early 2017, my buddy Dan Prestwich actually bought the "MIRROR MIRROR boxset" which contains all four films, even the mysterious and otherwise unavailable MIRROR MIRROR 4: REFLECTION. Yes, I have seen it. No, I don't want to talk about it.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2016 CHECKLIST!

Good Kill Hunting

TAGLINE	Forbidden desires are unleashed ...and unspeakable evil is watching. Well, I don’t know how “forbidden” normal vanilla cis sex with a steady partner is, but I guess an unspeakable evil IS watching. It just doesn’t really do anything, because it’s an evil mirror and can’t even touch itself.
TITLE ACCURACY	There are a few shots of a mirror, but calling this MIRROR, MIRROR is laughable. We do get a few shots of the mirror’s perspective while people bone, so I guess that’s the Voyeur part? Sure as hell don’t know what else it would be.
LITERARY ADAPTATION?	Ha.
SEQUEL?	Yup, and followed (supposedly) by MIRROR MIRROR 4: REFLECTION
REMAKE?	No
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN	USA
HORROR SUB-GENRE	Haunted/ Cursed Item, I guess. Realistically, “erotic thriller”
SLUMMING A-LISTER?	None, because Mark Ruffalo wasn’t famous yet. But now, Mark Ruffalo.
BELOVED HORROR ICON?	David Naughton!
NUDITY?	Constant
SEXUAL ASSAULT?	No
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!	Ruffalo finds a stuffed Raven in a cupboard while he spends a whole scene dancing and making a peanut butter jelly sandwich. He seems happy to see it, perhaps remembering the raven imagery in part 2. But while it does provide a lame jump scare, it does not attack or come to life or anything.
GHOST/ ZOMBIE / HAUNTED BUILDING?	Definitely a ghost, possibly a haunted mirror which never does anything
POSSESSION?	Surprisingly no, just regular haunting.
CREEPY DOLLS?	No dolls, or even furniture of any kind except beds for fucking and that stupid mirror.
EVIL CULT?	None
MADNESS?	No
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?	None
VOYEURISM?	The movie is called “The Voyeur,” which I guess translates to the mirror sitting in the bedroom watching people fuck, but never doing anything.
MORAL OF THE STORY	Not all franchises are created equal, but if they go on long enough eventually one of the later sequels will have an embarrassing early performance from an actor who will go on to be beloved and famous and that will keep them from ever entirely slipping into obscurity.