What actually happens
A night shift in a mirror warehouse
A subway station security guard runs until he reaches a room he cannot leave, then begs his reflection for mercy. The reflection cuts its own throat with a piece of glass, and the same wound appears on the guard, who dies. Ben Carson, a suspended police detective, begins a first shift as night guard at the Mayflower, an upscale department store that was gutted by fire and shut down five years before. Plenty of the store's mirrors are still in the building. After several nights Ben notices the mirrors acting strangely. He finds the previous night guard's wallet, plus a note that reads "Esseker," and he begins to suspect the reflections make things happen to people.
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A mirror that will not break
Ben's sister Angie is killed by her own reflection. This is the scene people dread, and it comes after Ben has been guarding the Mayflower for several nights. The reflection slowly tears off its lower jaw, and Angie bleeds to death. Angry and grieving, Ben tries to smash the Mayflower's mirrors, but nothing damages them. He demands to know what they want, and cracks on one of them spell out "ESSEKER". He cannot find an Esseker, so he tracks down Terrence Berry, the guard who started the fire five years before, and visits the mental institution where Terrence was held before his death. In a video, Terrence says the mirrors were responsible for his family's death once he failed to find Esseker.
Paint cans and a very alarmed ex-wife
Afraid for his family, Ben goes to his ex-wife Amy's home and removes the mirrors, painting over the ones he cannot. Amy is disturbed and threatens to call the police, which would end his contact with his kids. Ben shoots a mirror to show it cannot be damaged, but the mirror stays broken, and he leaves when he sees how scared his kids are. In the Mayflower basement he finds a chair surrounded by mirrors, a psychomanteum, and learns the store was built on the site of an old hospital. There he finds out about Anna Esseker, a patient who was 12 when she was thought to have died in a mass suicide. A record shows she was discharged two days earlier, so Ben thinks she is alive. At home, Amy notices that her son Michael's reflection acts differently from him, and Ben and Amy cover every reflective surface.
A convent with no mirrors at all
Ben visits Anna's childhood home, where he learns that she was violent and uncontrollable and had a severe schizophrenia diagnosis, and at St. Matthew's Hospital, Dr. Kane treated her by confining her in a chair surrounded by mirrors. Her brother Robert says that after she came home, apparently cured, strange things began happening with the mirrors in the house, so the family sent her to Saint Augustine's Monastery, a convent that bans mirrors entirely. When Ben gets there, he finds Anna alive and well. She explains that a demon had possessed her and then became trapped in the mirrors, where it keeps the souls of everyone it kills. Should she return, the demon could escape into the mortal world, so she refuses.
The ending, explained
Amy finds Michael missing and the floor covered in water. She puts her daughter Daisy in a safe closet and finds Michael, possessed, scraping the paint off the mirrors. Ben holds Anna at gunpoint, brings her to the Mayflower, and ties her into the chair. Michael is dragged through the water by his reflection and starts to drown, but when all the mirrors explode and the demon repossesses Anna, Michael is spared. The possessed Anna attacks Ben, who kills her by igniting a nearby gas line. The explosion collapses the old building on him. Ben drags himself out of the wreckage and sees police, firefighters and a body bag, but nobody notices him. Everything around him is reversed, and he works out that he died in there and is stuck in the mirror world.
The post-credits ruling
Nobody has confirmed whether there's a scene after the credits.
✓ Spoiled safelyDog status: fine, no dog dies.
Questions people ask at 1am
Is Mirrors scary?
Yes, Mirrors is a 5 out of 10 with medium dread. It relies on jump scares and gory deaths caused by reflections, so the fear is more sudden than lasting.
How does Mirrors end?
Ben ignites a gas line to destroy the possessed Anna, and the Mayflower collapses on him. Michael survives, but Ben has died in the rubble and is trapped in the mirror world.
Does the dog die in Mirrors?
No, no dog dies in Mirrors.
Is there a post-credits scene in Mirrors?
Nobody has confirmed whether Mirrors has a scene after the credits.
Who is Anna Esseker in Mirrors?
Anna Esseker was a patient at a psychiatric hospital. A demon possessed her and later became trapped in the mirrors. In Mirrors she is alive in a convent and refuses to go back, because the demon could escape into the world if she did.
