Film Review: MirrorMask (2005)

I’ve had this DVD for years and have never gotten around to watching it until now. I’ve always enjoyed Dave McKean’s art, so finding out he’s made movies did at least make me curious. However, as I stated in my Ink review, I’m not the biggest fan of Neil Gaiman (which is a big caveat for enjoying McKean’s work, since the two often work together). Thus, I kind of just let this sit on my shelf and forgot about it over time, but when I saw it sitting there again, I thought I should finally bite the bullet and check out what it had in store. It was………alright, and I’ll get into why in a bit. First off, here’s the plot.

The movie follows Helena, a teen girl who works at her parents’ circus. She’s not happy with her lot in life at the moment and wants nothing more than to live like a normal person. Well, she sadly gets her wish as her mother faints one night after a performance and has to go to the hospital. Now, Helena is stuck living with her grandmother while her mother gets prepped for surgery. Helena blames herself for what happened and is becoming more and more shut off from other people. All of a sudden, one night she finds herself in a strange dream-like fantasy world, which looks oddly similar to the sorts of drawings she makes in her free time. While walking around the newly surreal apartment grounds, she meets a group of performers, two of which get consumed by a shadowy substance that’s engulfing the area. The remaining performer, Valentine, helps Helena escape and takes her to the City of Light. There, she is mistaken for the Princess of the Land of Darkness and taken before the Prime Minister, who resembles her father. Apparently, this Princess stole a charm from the Queen of Light, who resembles Helena’s mother, and sent her into a coma, which has weakened the city to the power of the Queen of Shadows, who also resembles Helena’s mother. Helena offers to find the charm and bring it back, with Valentine’s semi-unwilling help, and so the two set off on a quest. As they make their way through the world, Helena finds that she can see into her room when she looks into any reflective glass (apparently, the glass connects to the drawings that she had hung up on her walls). She sees another her in the room, who’s acting far meaner and more rebellious, as well as destroying the drawings once she notices Helena looking in at her. This causes parts of the world to crumble, so they only have so much time to complete their quest. All the while, the Queen of Shadows is watching their every move and seems to mistake Helena for her own daughter (though ultimately, she doesn’t care if she’s actually her or not). Can Helena and Valentine find the charm, a.k.a. the mirrormask, before it’s too late? I’ll let you find out because I have to move on to my thoughts.

So, right off the bat, I can see what they were trying to do with the visual style: give Dave McKean’s art a physical dimension. Since the other world in this film is based on Helena’s drawings, it makes sense to try to do a “drawings come to life” sort of thing, but instead of going for a literal drawn style, they instead render everything with surreal CGI. It almost looks like one of those arty CD-ROM adventure games from the 90s, like Myst, 9: The Last Resort, Of Light and Darkness, or those ones based on The Residents. With the exception of select figures in the story, like Helena, Valentine, the Prime Minister, the two Queens, and the Princess, every other character (and the world itself) is portrayed in this sort of style. I feel like people will be one of two ways about this: they’ll either find the mix of elements really cool, or they’ll find it rather unconvincing. I once saw someone compare it to one of Robert Rodriguez’s kid films, which I didn’t really agree with, but I can sort of see what they meant (it might be too easy to tell that it’s just actors on a green screen set). It doesn’t help that the CGI on the surface isn’t the best quality, especially not by today’s standards. However, given the timeframe, the intent to be surreal on purpose, and the more indie-esque nature of the film, I think it generally works well enough. It also makes sense when you take into account that this is a Jim Henson Company production, because it feels very similar in concept/intent to their fantasy films. Back in the 80s, Jim Henson made The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, both attempts at creating fantasy stories and worlds, as well as attempts at giving dimension to illustrator Brian Froud’s artwork. As you’d expect, those films were brought to life mostly through puppetry, with Labyrinth adding in human characters to interact with said puppets. While this film is CG-based, you can still see this similar concept running through these films (plus, Henson was experimenting with CG near the end of his life, so I could see him approving of something like this). Sadly, though, this visual idea isn’t the only thing this film shares with those. All three of them run into a similar issue of feeling like they spent so much time creating the world that the story they try to tell with said world is kind of basic. The Dark Crystal had this problem a little worse than Labyrinth, since the former was attempting to tell a more grand and serious fantasy story while the latter was generally more fun and heartfelt (and super 80’s, I tell you what). MirrorMask feels like it falls somewhere in between the two camps, in that it’s a personal journey of a live-action teen girl in a fantasy world while also being more dramatic in tone. Sadly, while Labyrinth was able to work with its more simplistic story to create a generally enjoyable adventure, MirrorMask’s predictable story doesn’t raise the dramatic story to any greater effect. It mostly just felt like a typical kid-esque fantasy story, just with that extra layer of drama and angst to aim it more at teens. Basically, it’s Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland for goth/alternative kids, except with Neil Gaiman instead of Tim Burton or American McGee (and with a hint of Neverending Story, what with the shadows destroying the land). As I said in my Ink review, I’m not the biggest fan of Neil Gaiman. His work tends to have this flowery quality that seems to suggest more than I think I get out of them, almost like they want to be quirky yet meaningful, but often feel a bit hollow. I did enjoy the film version of Coraline, though, and this film is a little closer to that story in concept, but it didn’t quite reach that same mark for me. I don’t know, I think if you like Gaiman’s writing, Dave McKean’s art, and just want to see a somewhat standard fantasy film but with a weird style, then I don’t think this is a terrible choice. I did think that the visual style was cool on its own, admittedly. I’ll just caution you to not try to go into this looking for an amazing story to go along with the cool visuals, because at least for me, it fell short on that front.

Overall, MirrorMask is a decent film, and it was at least cool to see Dave McKean try his hand at feature filmmaking. I know he’s made several shorts and two other feature films as well, so I may check those out for the blog at some point. Not sure what the next film will be, so I’ll be ready with a surprise for you next time. Hopefully all the Neil Gaiman fans won’t come after me (I’m actually not sure what his fanbase is like, so apologies if they’re really just chill).