Mirrors, mirrors

I get into a lot of arguments over this, but I'm solidly in the pro-Alexandre Aja camp. His localized efforts, Haute Tension and the 2006 Hills Have Eyes remake, are both excellent, intense films about which I've written enough not to go into again here.

Aja only scripted the newly opened parking-garage cat-and-mouse thriller P2, with directing duties going to co-writer Franck Khalfoun, an actor (he appears in Haute Tension) making his writing/directing debut. I haven't caught P2 yet, and apparently neither has anyone else - it opened at #9 on the charts this weekend, with a total just over $2 million. For comparison, this is slightly less money than The Game Plan made in its seventh week.

Maybe it's better not to dwell on it; we'll look ahead to Aja's upcoming remake work instead.

Shot and awaiting a release date is another public-spaces-after-hours thriller: Mirrors, a redo of Kim Sung-ho's 2003 Korean chiller Into the Mirror. The flick's about haunted mirrors in a shopping mall, or mirrors in a haunted shopping mall, and the ex-PD mall security guard with the privilege of looking into it.

Kiefer Sutherland plays the guard and Paula Patton his wife; Ezra Buzzington makes his second Aja appearance.