As a lifelong fan of zombie films (Day of the Dead is my favorite), I have to admit that I’ve become a little tired of the genre lately. Mainly this is due to the flood of zombie material that started as a trickle with films like 28 Days Later and the Dawn of the Dead remake and became an unbearable flood with The Walking Dead and its countless spinoffs. After taking a bit of a break from most things zombie (though I thoroughly enjoyed 28 Years Later), I was ready to get back into it when I came across Mirror Life: Modern Zombies.
From a typical zombie movie standpoint, Mirror Life should scratch that itch, though its low budget prevents any hardcore gore effects or large-scale zombie hordes. But it does provide a rotating narrative that ticks off every box on the zombie movie checklist: evil lab, check; found footage, check; government exterminations, check; neighbors and loved ones turning on each other, check; zombie-induced paranoia, check, etc.
There’s a little bit of everything here, and while none of it is a standout of the genre, it does keep things moving quickly and never gets bogged down as some other zombie films can. For instance, when a few survivors of a drug-testing lab come across a doctor, you’d expect the obligatory exposition scene to follow with the doctor explaining what happened and how they never meant for this and blah blah blah. But here, the doctor is bludgeoned to death mid-sentence. It’s as if the movie was saying, “We don’t have time for this. We need to move on to a different character.”
Another odd and amusing quirk was a moment when an infected neighbor chased a young girl into a woman’s house. He starts to make his way toward the house armed with hedge clippers, and she pulls a gun on him, stopping him. Rather than shoot him, she just tells him, Jedi mind trick style, that this isn’t the girl he’s looking for, and the girl he wants ran the other way. He accepts this and takes off. In any other zombie movie, there’s no dialogue at all, and the neighbor is shot and killed. It was interesting that these rage-infected zombies could be reasoned with.
These small moments don’t make up for the overall film’s shortcomings, though. The multiple narratives feel more like a device to pad the time than a necessary way to tell the story. If just a couple of these elements were focused on a bit more, then perhaps this would have been a more memorable experience. As it is, Mirror Life is a decent enough zombie movie, but it most likely won’t make a lasting impression in the genre.
Special Features
This has all the mainstays of a good DVD release with a filmmaker commentary, deleted scenes, and outtakes.