The 2 stars are for what was an intriguing setup that positioned itself to resolve by way of a clever or satisfying ending based on the rules the film setup for itself.
Disastrously, however, the finale of the film completely abandons all the "rules" it setup for the situation.
Possible spoilers follow....
The protagonist establishes that this evil mirror has "predictable" behavior and the entire film fortifies that theory. In the current as well as the historical cases, the plants wither on cue, people dehydrate for some reason before this thing, and it protects itself if someone attacks it, etc...
However, just as another commenter pointed out, they knew the thing had a range of "power" of about 30 feet, inside of which, it would use the power of suggestion or whatever to make the person miss-hit or just not strike. So why not take it out with a rifle?
Additionally, the very last few minutes of the movie shifts into a huge film violation, which is to simply create illusions. What the viewer and characters are seeing aren't really there, but sometimes, it is really there. There is no consistency as to when something is there but really isn't or when something is really there but we and the characters can't perceive it. There is no consistency with using a camera to see what is real or not either.
So basically, the writers of the film created a canvas from which they allowed themselves to do absolutely anything they wanted. This is Deus ex Machina to the extreme. So they just write the characters perceiving themselves to kill the mirror when in reality they are hallucinating and one of them ends up getting killed. It is simply poor writing, and a disastrous, unsatisfying ending. Frankly, with all the hallucinations and illusions the writers set up by this point, we, the viewers, don't even have good reason to believe anything in the movie really happened. What's to stop them from making a sequel that says the last 10 minutes of the movie were just the protagonists' daydream, they snap out of it and resume the movie where they snap out of it. There is nothing to stop the story from going that direction if the writers' feel like it because they established anything goes, we can fake anything you see, etc....
Besides all that, the acting was generally flat as well. I can't recommend it.
Disastrously, however, the finale of the film completely abandons all the "rules" it setup for the situation.
Possible spoilers follow....
The protagonist establishes that this evil mirror has "predictable" behavior and the entire film fortifies that theory. In the current as well as the historical cases, the plants wither on cue, people dehydrate for some reason before this thing, and it protects itself if someone attacks it, etc...
However, just as another commenter pointed out, they knew the thing had a range of "power" of about 30 feet, inside of which, it would use the power of suggestion or whatever to make the person miss-hit or just not strike. So why not take it out with a rifle?
Additionally, the very last few minutes of the movie shifts into a huge film violation, which is to simply create illusions. What the viewer and characters are seeing aren't really there, but sometimes, it is really there. There is no consistency as to when something is there but really isn't or when something is really there but we and the characters can't perceive it. There is no consistency with using a camera to see what is real or not either.
So basically, the writers of the film created a canvas from which they allowed themselves to do absolutely anything they wanted. This is Deus ex Machina to the extreme. So they just write the characters perceiving themselves to kill the mirror when in reality they are hallucinating and one of them ends up getting killed. It is simply poor writing, and a disastrous, unsatisfying ending. Frankly, with all the hallucinations and illusions the writers set up by this point, we, the viewers, don't even have good reason to believe anything in the movie really happened. What's to stop them from making a sequel that says the last 10 minutes of the movie were just the protagonists' daydream, they snap out of it and resume the movie where they snap out of it. There is nothing to stop the story from going that direction if the writers' feel like it because they established anything goes, we can fake anything you see, etc....
Besides all that, the acting was generally flat as well. I can't recommend it.