Ulli Lommel directs Suzanna Love, John Carradine and Ron James in this supernatural horror where two abused children grow up in safety but their simmering trauma returns in the form of a cursed mirror.

A cheap chiller that somehow made the infamous video nasty list back in the moral panic Eighties. Creepy and discombobulating. Sure, there are some inventive kills but they happen at a languid pace. Befalling young actors who we’ve only been introduced tangentially to the protagonists moments before. The ending goes for an all out Exorcist / Amityville blow out on a shoestring. The most unnerving sequence though is the prologue where two young kid spy on their mother having an affair through a window. All hell breaks loose when their curiosity is discovered and we only catch elliptical glimpses of the fall out. It is a genuinely icky opener, and the movie always retains that yucky energy. Yet it also feels like a directionless mish-mash made for tuppence. A curio.

5

Perfect Double Bill: Hell Night (1981)

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