Dir. Sean Ellis, France/UK, 2008, 88 mins
Cast: Lena Headey, Richard Jenkins
Review by Carol Allen
In contrast to writer/director Sean Ellis's debut feature, which was the modestly budgeted and quirkily charming fantasy Cashback, this is a full blown SciFi/horror film with reasonably high production values. It's well shot, has a good cast including an American Oscar nominee, and an intriguing story idea.
Gina is a radiologist in London with a sexy French boyfriend Steve and a loving family. At a surprise birthday party for her father John (Jenkins) where her brother, his girlfriend and Steve are present, a mirror unexpectedly crashes to the floor. Seven years bad luck or in this case, something more sinister. The next day Gina sees what appears to be herself driving past in her own car. She follows the doppelganger to her apartment, where she finds a photo of herself with her father. While driving away she crashes into a taxi and ends up in hospital with no memory of the accident apart from the odd flashback in her nightmares. She then becomes convinced that her boyfriend has been replaced by a doppelganger imposter. And odd things are also happening to the rest of her family, who were at the party when the mirror smashed. The hospital doctors think it may be a hallucination as a result of the accident. But is it?
There are echoes of previous movies here — a very scary shower scene (Psycho), water dripping through the ceiling as in Dark Water and more than a touch of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which is no bad thing. It's a useful horror technique to play on our expectations and memories. Ellis does though lay it on with a trowel a bit right from the word go, with some heavy doses of menacing music, which make a simple journey on the London tube appear laden with dark threats. There are an awful lot of scenes with characters staring at their own reflections and mirrors drop off walls in cascades, making the film in some ways a horror version of Alice Through the Looking Glass . The story is a bit slow to take off but once it gets going, it develops an appropriate spooky momentum. Headey gives an engaging performance, which holds our interest and Jenkins is as always worth watching. The ending fails to offer a very convincing explanation for the mystery and doesn't really make sense in view of Gina's behaviour and personality throughout the movie. Compared to the originality of Ellis's previous movie, it's somewhat disappointing but it's an intriguing little tale for collectors of this genre and demonstrates that Ellis is still a talent to watch.
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