Through a Dark Mirror is a 2019 mystery about the secrets behind one man connected to six deaths that occured at the same time.
The art of a good police interrogation, at least back in the old days of cinema, seemed to depend on the wattage of the light bulb they shined in the suspect’s face. ‘Course, movies have evolved since those days and in that time, moments with smart detectives staring down cagey perps have become almost ubiquitous, sometimes central to the very plot of the film. You’re probably leaping right to famous names like Bryan Singer‘s The Usual Suspects, though others like Stephen Hopkins‘ Under Suspicion with Gene Hackman are just as good. Either way, we’re back at the interrogation table once again in writer and director Jason Fite‘s latest independent feature film Through a Dark Mirror, with face-to-face the special of the day.
In police custody, Bryan (with a ‘y’) Tyler (Alexander Tol) sits in an interview room as Detective Chief Inspector Dawson (Peter Parker Mensah) looks through the two-way mirror, scaling up his target. Dawson’s a seasoned, aggressive cop with a few secrets up his sleeve (and his past). Tyler’s been brought in as the only connection linking six men to their sudden deaths, each having deposited fifty thousand pounds in his bank account. Seems suspicious. More strange is what he seems to have convinced these men of believing (something I won’t spoil), but Dawson isn’t buying it and once in the room, begins his questions, thinking he can break Tyler in record time. He doesn’t. Thing is, Tyler isn’t – if you’ll pardon the phrasing – a usual suspect, and soon enough, it’s a contest of wills and words to see who outsmarts the other.
Through a Dark Mirror has a genuinely tricky plate to keep spinning. It’s set primarily in one divided room for nearly the full runtime, clocking in at nearly two hours. Up to its end, there is no conventional ‘action’ a police drama typically has in store, instead, characters bound to their singular positions on opposite sides of a grey steel table in varying states of conversation, accusation, confessions, and more. No, it’s not a new idea of course. Look how good My Dinner With Andre did it. Sure, no cops were in that one but you get the idea. Sometimes engaging dialogue – and subtle camerawork – is all you need.
With this, we get a little mystery to unravel, even as Tyler isn’t set up in any real ambiguous way, his place in all this pretty much declared from the start. Dawson, along with psychiatrist Dr. Rhodes (Leonie Zeumer), slowly lay into him verbally – and with the big detective, sometimes physically – to find out what he’s really about. The riddle in the works is what Tyler claims to be and what he offers any willing to buy, yet is it real or only a trick? This eventually divides our heroes … and maybe those watching as well.
A movie like this relies entirely on its promised twist, one it sets up like bowling pins right from frame one, steadily layering the suspense of yes or no with some tricky wording and a few unexpected shifts in the momentum. Fite doesn’t have a lot to work with, production-wise, with a small cast and limited sets, and so wisely avoids trying to work in cumbersome visual effects and unattainable action set-pieces. What he does instead is use the space and audio to better shape the story, with some claustrophobic camera work and a steady ticking clock setting the pace. But does it have the pay off?
That’ll depend on your patience for a purposefully slow grind meant to reel you into the shadows of its well-earned and troubling finale. Not every filmmaker has the funds to tell the story they want, but that shouldn’t be the scale for how these movies should be seen or judged. Through the Dark Mirror is a small movie with big ideas, Fite and his cast giving the whole thing a slight Twilight Zone vibe. For a film weighty with conversation, it holds attention, being an actor’s story rather than a director’s, though Fite dabbles into some well-staged moments of conflict with genuine style. Recommended.
Through a Dark Mirror is currently in its festival run with a pending release date.