Horror Aughts: ‘Mirrors’s Unabashed Gore is Still a Delight

Alexandre Aja will Alexandre Aja

‘Horror Aughts’ is a column in which I revisit scary movies from the 2000s that were big commercial hits at the time but have been largely forgotten ever since.

You never forget your first Alexandre Aja horror. Mine was the mean and appallingly brutal Haute Tension (unnecessarily retitled Switchblade Romance) at a time when I had no clue that French horror auteurs were freaking insane. I wasn’t familiar with New Extremity Films (or the Splat Pack), and Aja’s ruthless slasher was a shocking introduction to the subgenre. The arousing, uncompromising, and over-the-top brutality felt new and bold in a way that immediately touched my gore-loving heart, and I wanted to see more of the same.

Mirrors followed Aja’s best work, the merciless remake of The Hills Have Eyes, and by then, I was already a fan. Though his second remake (based on the South Korean Into the Mirror) might be the weakest of the three he made, it’s another unapologetically vicious and characteristic vision of the writer-director, which aged far better than one would expect. There are just not many horrors today that open with a man slitting his own throat in front of a mirror, committing to a raw ultra-violence right from the bat that instantly defines the approach of a story that you’re about to see unfold. Aja was never one to mislead or bait his audience.