Story
A photographer moves her family into a strange old house, where she discovers an alternate reality reflected in the glass… A dark reality that is closing in on her.
Director’s Statement
People often ask us about the inspiration for Dark Mirror. This is the closest I’ll come to a director’s statement:
Erin and I both knew that we wanted to have kids. But we were afraid of what that would mean to our careers. You can’t take the same risks when you are completely responsible for a defenseless human being. Making films is all risk.
This is especially the case for Erin. For many women, having a kid means compromising their career.
As we started to look into how other people coped, we discovered one thing: we were not alone.
We discovered books like “The Bitch in the House,” “Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety,” and “The Mommy Myth” that talked about the trouble women have combining kids with a career. The reasons are many and come from different sources. But ultimately, it comes down to this:
More than anything, there are certain practical realities that no one can deny: Pregnancy, labor, breast-feeding. Someone has to raise the kid. Someone has to make money.
When you factor in the workaholic nature of the average American career and the difficulty in finding good childcare, it sometimes feels like we’re living in the 1950’s, pre-feminist revolution.
We were both afraid of being trapped. The roles of our parents are all too easy to fall into.
It was these anxieties that we put into the film: the specter of the past that we are trying to get away from.
Oh. And time is running out.