The Other Side of the Mirror – 2016 – Alice in Wonderland(ish)
The Other Side of the Mirror aka The Darker Side of the Mirror is a movie I should really enjoy. I like the premise of Alice in Wonderland being interpreted freely. There are a lot of adaptations already and perhaps we don’t need another one to exactly follow Lewis Carroll’s novel. I haven’t read it of course so I donät know how well all the other movies spanning from the early 1900s till the movies with Johnny Depp and Gene Wilder which I think are the most recognizable adaptions these days. There are also musicals and, of course, erotic takes of the story. I imagined Alice to be trapped in more serious trouble this time considering the title with Darker Side of the Mirror mentioned.
Insanity
But I can’t say I enjoyed it at all. It was a total mess for me. I get that it’s supposed to be mysterious and that the characters are supposed to be completely out there. The Mad Hatter should be…mad and so forth. The problem is that I’m not convinced that this story takes place in a fairytale land or in reality. It could just as easily take place in a mental institution. There are scenes to support this theory for sure. I like that approach quite a lot but it’s very uncertain if this is what’s meant to be the movie’s universe.
Acting
Acting-wise I’m also highly disappointed. None of the characters really did it for me. except for Selena Tibert playing Alice. I think she’s the only believable character in this. The rest are not really motivated to give a performance or the casting is totally of. Some choices of characters were very strange. If you for instance hire two characters to play mother and daughter, maybe the mother should seem older than the daughter. Also, it’s not really clear who the different characters are. The Mad Hatter is easy, and so is Alice but there are also other people which I don’t have a clue about. And characters that I don’t really see the significance of. Were they really necessary for the movie to include?
Bottom line is that it’s a total mess, at least for me. It’s not totally horror nor fantasy, even if I wished it would be both. It’s more like a journey inside a deranged mind, but without a clear thread or idea of what the theme of the movie should be.
