25 Evil Movie Mirrors

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A glass, darkly

Prince Of Darkness (1987)

Phantasm (1979)

The Mirror: An unremarkable mirror hanging on the wardrobe of a teenage boy becomes a sinister trap thanks to the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) and his minions.

On Reflection: Any mirror attached to a door is gonna reveal something nasty when the door’s opened and closed. Always. It’s one of the most sacred and inviolable laws of horror movies, there’s just no getting round it.

The Watcher In The Woods (1980)

The Mirror: A new family re-awakens an old tragedy when they move into the home of Mrs Aylwood (Bette Davis): her daughter mysteriously disappeared 30 years ago, but the Curtis’s daughter looks suspiciously like her. Enough that mirrors apparently get confused, showing the wrong reflections whenever the girl goes near them…

On Reflection: Halls of mirrors are scary enough without ghosts getting involved. Brrr.

Amityville: A New Generation (1993)

The Mirror: Once it’d stopped seeming believable that anyone would move into that evil-looking Ocean Avenue house, the Amityville franchise moved onto evil furnishings from the house. A mirror ends up in the possession of an artist, and proceeds to kill people off in weird ways.

On Reflection: Someone should’ve burned that house down with all its contents. And salted the ground.

Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (1937)

The Mirror: Some mirrors are more flattering than others, as anyone who’s ever been in a New Look changing room can tell you. But the evil queen’s Magic Mirror is one of the harshest mirrors out there, constantly comparing all the women in the kingdom against one another, and taunting those it deems less than perfect. How rude.

On Reflection: If this mirror had just kept its mouth shut, all that abandoning-princesses-in-the-forest malarkey could have been avoided.

Poltergeist (1982)

The Mirror: All the fixtures and fittings in the Freelings’ Cuesta Verde home are suspect, from the TV to the wardrobes, but the bathroom mirror plays a particularly nasty trick on anyone who looks into it: it shows them their own decaying face.

On Reflection: Age comes for us all in the end.

The Conjuring (2013)

The Mirror: As if antique music boxes weren’t creepy enough, the one the Perron kids find in their scary new house has a mirror built into the lid. Stare into it, and you can see ghosts over your shoulder. Because that’s a nice idea, no?

On Reflection: Has any single object ever looked more haunted than this music box?

The Broken (2008)

The Mirror: Another movie about the perils of breaking mirrors, The Broken sees a hoard of evil doppelgangers escape into the real world after an apparently normal mirror gets smashed.

On Reflection: Why are doppelgangers always evil, anyway?

Mirror Mirror (1990)

The Mirror: This mirror grants its owner the power to get revenge on their enemies – a power the unpopular teenager Megan (Rainbow Harvest) uses to its utmost. Inevitably, though, it turns out there’s a price to be paid for unlocking the mirror’s demons.

On Reflection: The best revenge is living well, or something like that.

Urban Legends: Bloody Mary (2005)

The Mirror: You can’t make an evil mirrors list without the classic Bloody Mary legend cropping up somewhere along the line, so here it is. In this sequel, a group of friends conjure Mary by chanting into a mirror, and unsurprisingly find themselves being targeted by a vengeful spirit.

On Reflection : You’d think teenagers would know better by now.