Mirror Mirror (1990)

A title I have been aware of for years, but somehow never got around to seeing, Mirror Mirror is a decent enough, if unspectacular, horror movie that benefits from some interesting names in the supporting cast.

Rainbow Harvest stars as Megan Gordon, a young woman who has just moved into a new home with her mother, Susan (Karen Black). Moving into a new home means also integrating into a new school crowd, which Megan finds difficult. But things look set to improve when she makes a friend in Nikki (Kristin Dattilo). They may improve even more as she starts to inadvertently draw some power from a mirror that sits in her new home. 

Directed by Marina Sargenti, who also co-wrote the screenplay with about three other people, this is an odd, but not unsatisfying, mix of offbeat character moments and standard “Carrie-esque” fare. The mirror itself may be the main supernatural force at the heart of the film, but everything becomes much more interesting when Megan starts to realise what is going on, and subsequently starts to enjoy her power. It's worth noting, however, that this is a tame horror movie, with the death scenes lacking any major bloodshed and gore. Not that any horror always needs loads of the red stuff, but this would have been more fun with added splatter. At least there are some good special effects used in a couple of key scenes.

Harvest is good in the main role, maintaining a persona that never feels completely malicious, even as her actions become worse and worse. Dattilo is perfectly fine in her role, even if it is a much easier one, and Charlie Spradling is good value as the bully, Charleen. There are some young males in the cast, but they make much less of an impression. Karen Black doesn’t get enough screentime, despite having a couple of superb scenes with the inimitable William Sanderson, but you do get a decent number of little scenes featuring the much-loved Yvonne De Carlo (playing someone who learn of the history attached to the mirror), and that makes everything better.

Very derivative, easily forgettable, and lacking one standout sequence to make it one to recommend, Mirror Mirror nevertheless entertains for the runtime. And I will inevitably check out the sequels one day. 

6/10

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Children Of The Corn IV: The Gathering (1996)

Children Of The Corn: The Gathering is a pretty terrible movie, saved from the bottom of the barrel by at least two great actresses in main roles and some fleeting moments of impressive imagery.

Karen Black plays June Rhodes, a woman who just can't bring herself to move beyond her garden path nowadays. Fear grips her and she can't seem to get to the root of the problem. She's taking medication, she knows that she should be making progress, but nothing seems to improve. Her daughter, Grace (Naomi Watts), comes home to help her, hopefully, along the road to recovery, but before you can say "He Who Walks Behind The Rows" it turns out that the local kids have all started to turn into evil little shits and all adults must die. Or something like that.

It's hard to care about a movie that feels so slapdash. In some ways, this is better than the third movie, but it loses the sense of fun and suffers from a lack of Screaming Mad George (as does any movie that doesn't feature work from Screaming Mad George).

Director Greg Spence, who co-wrote the screenplay with Stephen Berger, puts everything together in a standard movie shape, but he doesn't ever really manage to heat things up at all. There aren't any decent set-pieces. At all. Even the finale fails to muster any excitement. Perhaps the concept was already stretched too thin by the end of the first movie, of course. Indeed, why Stephen King gets a credit on each film is beyond me. If he fought so hard against The Lawnmower Man  then I can only assume that he just doesn't know that these films exist.

Fans of Karen Black will enjoy her performance here, she gets a fair amount of screentime and does the hand-wringing, nervous nellie act very well, and fans of Naomi Watts will have fun seeing her "slumming it" before she became a Hollywood darling. As for the rest of the cast, William Windom is good as the local doc, Brent Jennings is a father alarmed by the violence that he witnesses in his household and young Jamie Renee Smith, Mark Salling and Lewis Flanagan III play some of the affected children.

Despite having no reason to actually exist, this film almost manages to be watchable, mainly thanks to Watts and Black. The fact that it falls short is thanks to Spence and Berger.

4/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Children-Corn-IV-The-Gathering/dp/B004WJRUYY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1379016784&sr=8-1&keywords=children+of+the+corn+4