Ian West’s review published on Letterboxd:
This felt ripe for a revisit because I'm an optimist and I like Aja’s work but this is a prime example of squandered potential… a director on the rise coming off arguably his best film, an eerie atmospheric setting (burnt down abandoned department store), and an interesting premise involving something so simple yet effective... Mirrors.
Starts out strong (despite the stock 'down and out ex cop' trope) with few nicely executed scenes/jump scares in the abandoned store, but as more time passes this thing just starts to flounder. We get a few pulse raising moments halfway through (that bathtub death is fantastic) and some cool spooky mirror shit but in the long run I couldn't help but feel like this was just missing that extra pizazz. Keifer is fine, and Aja's direction comes across very workmanlike here which makes me wonder why he chose to follow up his excellent Hills remake with a toned down K-Horror remake that suffers from being made at a time when the decades genre entries were running out of steam and, if you ask me, totally in need of the changes coming in the next few years.
I really wanted to like this more this time around and but there's just a lack of urgency and staleness that kinda took me out of it which was a bummer.
I'm still gonna watch the sequel tho lol