When the first trailer for Alexandre Aja’s Mirrors premiered, with the exception of Slashfilm and a few horror sites, the Net issued a collective “meh, pass.” The trailer even purportedly received loud guffaws at a press screening, and we received four death threats just for suggesting that the film itself might actually be creepy. Scarier than email/gchat death threats from nerds, even. A friend and source close to the production tells me that the film will definitely deliver and give Alex Aja (Haute Tension) the industry cachet to keep kids up at night for many years. He compares what he’s seen of the film to Jacob’s Ladder meets Poltergeist III (and P3 was fucking scary, admit it), and says that even this trailer doesn’t do the film justice.

IGN received the red band and suddenly the Net consensus has pulled a uniform “maybe I was wrong.” The red band offers a nice round-up of the recurring psychotic optical “jaggies” and too-real throat slits that Aja is great at. We also see co-star Amy Smart, or a reflection thereof, removing her mandible. No big deal. The scenes with tykes are cliche, sure, but the tone is inherently spooky and a welcome return to the horror genre for Kiefer Sutherland. Summer ‘08 is offering a great mix of films, and I think we’ll include Mirrors as a fun contribution when all is said and done.

Mirrors opens August 15th.

Discuss: Run of the mill or do you think Mirrors and Aja will deliver actual scares?