As a Nightmare Fuel page, all spoilers are unmarked as per wiki policy. You Have Been Warned!
Mirrors. Here's the checklist. Is it a horror movie? Check. Directed by Alexandre Aja? Check. Known for its creative kills? Yeah, you're gonna be leery of your own mirrors for a bit after watching this one.
- The original movie poster
◊ (and soundtrack cover) is extremely unsettling. The poster and soundtrack cover are both basically half of younger Anna’s terrified face from the scene where she is being strapped in the chair by Dr Kane’s staff in a dark setting, and due to half of her mouth from the shot not being shown due to the dark setting of it, it actually looks like a symbol of Angela’s infamous death scene in the movie as well. Good luck sleeping after seeing that - The double dose of Body Horror that is the bathroom scene, courtesy of witnessing Angela's reflection ripping off its own jaw with its bare hands, and seeing the same thing happen to Angela herself. It doesn't help that the poor woman has no clue as to what is happening to her when her mouth involuntarily opens wider and wider and shows no signs of stopping, and she soon thrashes about in her bathtub in agony until she dies from blood loss as her jaw is torn from her face by an unseen force.
- The Jump Scare when Ben sees the reflection of Gary Lewis's dead body at the morgue is quite disturbing.
- The scene where Amy finds her son talking to himself/his own reflection is eerie enough, but when he turns to get his things and his reflection stays in the mirror, staring at her, is truly hair-raising.
- What Anna becomes when she goes back to the mirror room.
- What Anna went through during her days at the psychiatric hospital. Consider that if this were Real Life and not a movie where Demonic Possession was real and possible, this would be a case of a Mad Scientist experimenting on a helpless, mentally-disturbed young girl—ostensibly to try and help "cure" her, but even if his motives truly were altruistic and not just For Science!, his methods leave a lot to be desired. In the movie the results are bad enough, with his unleashing the demon into the mirrors resulting in almost all the inmates killing themselves and each other, but in Real Life it would result in the kinds of trauma not seen since the days of Bedlam House and electroshock therapy. Worst of all is that while in Real Life it is arguable whether the victim of such mental illness would be aware of what they were doing or what the doctor was doing to them, Anna would have been aware of and experiencing it the entire time.
- Related to this is the fact that, as detailed on the main page under Shown Their Work, what Dr. Kane did was based on a real concept, albeit one taken from spiritualism rather than psychology and completely altered both in its execution and its intended use. It makes perfect (and terrifying) sense that an invention meant to help one communicate with the dead could result, when misused and abused, in the escape of a demon and all the terrible things that happened at the hospital and then at Mayflower; the question of what would have happened had Kane built and used the psychomanteum correctly is unanswered, but staring only into darkness while possessed by a demon could have had just as horrific results. It also underscores, for those who believe in such things, the dangers in trying to communicate with the dead/the spirit world.
- Ben's fate: getting stuck on the other side of the mirror.
