5. Mirrors - Mirrors (2008)
Known as
spectrophobia, the fear of mirrors, this is a phobia that seems to have root in a fear of the paranormal, with victims of the phobia often acquiring it because of a belief in supernatural event involving mirrors, lending to the absurdity. Mirrors are also a horror movie cliche, frequently used in jump scares involving medicine cabinets, you know the kind, which could be another catalyst for this sort of fear in people. Obviously, mirrored surfaces are everywhere and offer a reflection of yourself and your surroundings; they can be familiar in a way and a deviation from what you expect to see is naturally scary and horror movies often use this to various effect. The film which plays up this fear the most is the aptly titled Mirrors. While not the best movie on this list; its a bit long, over-ambitious, and gets too ridiculous in its final act, it does however, offer a fairly solid first half devoted almost entirely to mirror based scares. It pulls out every mirror based scare tactic in the book, and the briskly paced first half will definitely have you double-checking your reflection afterwards, making it worthy of holding this place on the list. Like many other more average horror films, when not taken too seriously, it provides some good, hokey, B-movie fun, complete with some unintentionally hilarious bits of overreacting from Keifer Sutherland. The first half is an effective supernatural horror, the second half is Jack Bauer versus inanimate objects and demons, make of it what you will.