A long while back I sent Vanity Mirror off to Film Threat to be reviewed. Film Threat is a site started by Chris Gore, who's an independent film reviewer and film festival guru. They have a reputation for giving their honest opinions about films and not sugar coating everything. Vanity Mirror got a 3 out of 5 stars which is "good." No stars is "crap" and 5 is "perfect" so I'm pretty happy with my good. Here's the review:
Katie
Film Threat
VANITY MIRROR
by Rory L. Aronsky
(2005-10-10)
2005, Un-rated, 10 minutes, JKR Productions
Yeah, vanity can be a real bitch. Keep preening yourself like that and soon it’s all you’re thinking about. The hair’s got to be a certain way, and there’s so much primping to make Narcissus wince. At least that’s the intention for the blonde-haired woman (Julia Denton) unsettled by an ugly half-done Robocop prototype kind of man (Sean Larsen) holding up a flower. He likes her beauty, but she doesn’t like him.
Now it could be that her rejecting him leads to the darkness that settles down upon her or it could simply be that she’s just gone paranoid over keeping her looks, especially when a mirror image of herself begins to mutilate itself. The mirrors magnify the wrinkles and the stretched skin. She looks like she’s in her late ‘20s which makes immediate aging impossible, though Katie T. Damien is also reaching for a kind of “Tales from the Crypt” vibe here, with uneasy black-and-white cinematography which is effective, but makes us wonder what kind of lesson she’s exactly learning her. Love your fellow freak? Watch out for the skinhead with the squinty eyes? Don’t shave in those sexy places after midnight? There’s a foreboding feeling here, but it doesn’t quite reach fully around giving that kind of brain wedgie to make you wonder even further about the character. Atmosphere, and not much else. The character may feel disturbed, but we’re not.
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