Hello, spoilers
I think the idea was that happy endings aren't horrifying, but that got undercut by only having a bad end through the characters grabbing the Idiot Ball
Kaylie seemed desperate to prove that the mirror had supernatural powers and Tim didn't believe it. That's why neither of them just destroyed the mirror in the beginning. As for the rest, it's not really criticism to complain that the main characters lost. The main characters don't have to win.
I hate modern horror films anyway so I won't be seeing this movie.
Well, that's easy. They set out to annoy you specifically. One might daresay they did a bang-up job right there.
My first thought as the credits rolled was that it WAS Kaylie's hubris that drove the plot, and the inevitable conclusion. She was exhuberantly confident in the beginning that she had the thing figured out, she'd thought of everything, she was in control. The rest of the film slowly revealed how wrong she was, tied in cleverly with fleshing out the backstory.
The reason why they didn't destroy it until later was because Kaylie wanted to clear their name of the mess.
Considering that the mirror is able to change perception throughout the film, it's also possible it grew Kaylie's desire into clearing their names into an obsession.
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What Did the Director Want to Accomplish?
While the beginning of the movie was playing with the psychological horror bits to a T and doing it very well with it's choice of actors, its setting and its conflict, there were a couple glaring flaws that lead to a very disappointing ending. Is that what the director was aiming for, or was this a coincidental accident? If it was exploring how NOT to destroy a malicious illusionary artifact that lead to the insanity and death of those characters and their family, then it could have illustrated that point somehow. Instead, you are brought into a story where the characters are likeable, and encourage you to want to see them survive. They are intelligent, and take precautions to assure no mistakes are made by their actions, and even have different points of view: one from the believer, one from the skeptic.
Unfortunately, there was no reason why the protagonists couldn't seemingly think of just executing their fail-safe and destroying the mirror. There was no allusion to hubris, pride or any tragic element that would lead to one of the characters acting that foolishly. After acquiring proof that, as the mirror fed on the bait, it's illusions got stronger, that should have been enough to convince the protagonists to leave the mirror to it's demise and leave.
Instead you get an ending where one of the main characters die, the second takes the blame for their "murder", and the mirror which caused all of this is free to kill once again. Instead of making one feel unsettled that the mirror is manipulative and a force of horror, it disappoints the audience that such likeable characters fail, and in the end, lose everything. The movie wasn't about how evil and calculated the mirror was, but how the characters, who previously lost their parents because of that mirror's insanity, and wanted to set things right and defeat the evil that personally destroyed their childhoods.
From what I gathered from the movie, that may have been what the director was aiming for: to invalidate the main characters' cause and passion, end the movie with the mirror outsmarting those who wanted to destroy it, and have the viewers turn off the TV in morose disappointment. If the director wanted to disappoint the audience, there are less annoying and less expensive ways of accomplishing this. Other reviews mirror my thoughts of nonfulfillment, joke intended.