'Mirrors' Press Screening Cancelled

What could I possibly glean from this information?

By: Brad Brevet
Published: Saturday, August 9th 2008 at 10:48 PM

A bit of Mirrors movie magic
Photo: 20th Century Fox, image creation by Brad Brevet

Well, unfortunately a bit of bad news regarding Mirrors made its way into my Inbox today as I learned the previously announced press screening for the film has been cancelled here in Seattle… at least cancelled for press, not sure if they will still be filling the seats with the usual riff-raff that attends every single free movie screening.

I say this is bad news because I was actually looking forward to seeing the film, and considering it was set up for an 8 PM screening the night before release what harm could it really cause to show it to the limited number of online press that would be able to get a review up quickly and the relatively zero number of print press that would show up since it would have already been past their deadline before they could get a review written.

This leads me to believe that test screenings aren't going well and any kind of chatter about the film, especially negative, is not wanted by Fox, a studio that actually screened Hitman or press, which I assume was a move based on the fact that the videogame nerds were going to show up regardless of what critics thought. Guess what, that is assured to happen with horror fans as well. Gimme gore and gimme more is what they want and now critic will dissuade them.

I don't say this to bash Fox or the film, but just to let you know we won't have a review of the film and why. I felt I should have done that with X-Files as I missed that due to inflexible screening times and my flight to Comic Con. I guess most of you will be at Tropic Thunder anyway, a film I already reviewed and recommend you go see.