I always loved the Sandman covers McKean did for the Neil Gaiman series, and had high hopes going into this film that it would be a visual stunner. I wasn’t disappointed, and Dave McKean’s designs coupled with the animatronic genius of the Jim Henson Company create a fanciful, beautifully layered world of imagination. Imagine Alice in Wonderland illustrated by Miro and Dali, and you have some sense of the feel of MirrorMask. If you like Brothers Quay, you’ll like this picture.
The story follows Helena, well-played by Stephanie Leonidas, a young girl who finds herself in a dream world of her own creation, struggling to bring balance to the world to save her ailing mother. The overall story is quite familiar, and is in some ways reminiscent of Gaiman’s work on Neverwhere. Helena and her jester for hire companion Valentine traverse a fantastical world haunted by hungry Sphinx cats and menacing shadows. The film is slow to get going, but once we are embedded in the dream world there is more than enough eye candy to satisfy just about anyone. There are some wonderful moments, but overall the narrative lacks the strength of the visual world created in the film, and the pacing as a result ends up feeling a bit lethargic overall. While the story initially seems built around Helena’s need to apologize to her mother, this gets lost midway through the story and Helena’s character arc fails to achieve much of anything as a result.
The tone is quite creepy and frenetic at times, with much of the musical accompaniment setting one’s mind at disease. The masks throughout are fabulous, and there are some wonderful creatures such as the porcupine guard of the black queen and a floating giant couple that speaks incredibly slowly. While this won’t knock your socks off on a narrative level, there are tons of visual suggestions that will give you dream material for weeks to come.