Mirror Mirror 2: Raven Dance (1994)

After a prologue in which a Catholic nun, Sister Aja (Veronica Cartwright), is blinded by the demonic mirror from part one and a crazy lady is eaten by it (or something), we find ourselves an undisclosed number of years later in the same nunnery.

Actually, it’s not a simple nunnery anymore, but an orphanage. An orphanage of a kind, at least, for this is one of those peculiar movie orphanages lacking orphans. Well, apart from dancing-mad Marlee (Tracy Wells) and her (probably) autistic brother (name of the actor withheld to protect bad child actors). For, ahem, reasons, an industrial punk group rehearses a jaunty little number in front of the mirror. In the nunnery/orphanage, while Marlee and brother are watching, oh, yes. The impatient music critic mirror zaps the band to ashes and does something (?) that connects it to Marlee and sibling and leaves Marlee either blind, practically blind, or with reduced vision, depending on the needs of any given scene.

From here on out, things become less strange, though not more comprehensible: Marlee is apparently heiress to a fortune, but her evil step sister Roslyn (Sally Kellerman) teams up with one Dr. Lasky (Roddy McDowell) to drug her insane, the local handyman (William Sanderson) providing practical help to provide her with more effective “hallucinations”. At the same time, Marlee and the mirror fall in love. Our heroine dances a lot, excitedly, terribly. A young Mark Ruffalo appears to earn his “I was in horror movies at the beginning of my career” boy scout badge by getting into a love triangle with the mirror and Marlee. He may be a ghost, or the grown-up child of Nikki from the first movie, or both, or something. He’s doing the rebellious lover thing, badly, and ends up wrestling the mirror demon (I assume) for five second in the incomprehensible climax.

Reading my attempt at a plot synopsis, you’ll probably think “what the hell is going on?”. Watching Jimmy Lifton’s (also composer of the synth noodling score and “writer”) Mirror Mirror 2, the same question came up repeatedly in my head, as well. The only part of the script that makes any narrative sense is the whole, not terribly interesting, “drive the relation” insane business. It doesn’t make much logical sense, of course, but then, the basic situation Marlee is in with the orphan-less orphanage (because that’s where rich heiresses end up, right?) makes little sense either. The supernatural elements are even more incomprehensible. In general, motivations and emotions seem to shift from minute to minute, whereas plans are too stupid to comprehend.

Which really sounds like rather good fun if you are like me: usually of the persuasion that mood, worldbuilding and an air of strangeness are the most important thing about many a movie. Alas, large parts of Mirror Mirror 2 are no fun at all, but feel like an endless slog through badly copied Hitchcock, unconnected supernatural shenanigans and terrible dance routines. The beginning is fun enough, and the climax, while still making not a lick of sense, at least has the good sense to be bizarre and goofy enough to distract one from the pains of existence. The in-between - what the layman might turn “most of the film” – however, is excruciatingly dull nonsense, as if our writer/director had confused some doodles he made on a napkin with the finished script and just shot the napkin. It’s so bad, even the on paper very fun cast can’t turn it entertaining; let’s not even dream of “coherent”.