Well, this was rather charming. Dave McKean directed it, and the film has very much the same aesthetic as the collaboration between him and Neil Gaiman that I've read, Wolves in the Walls - that distinctively crooked, childish, slightly grotesque collage/bricolage effect. In fact, it plays a bit like a story-book as well, framed by the 'real world' setting on either side and following a scene-by-scene structure in between, more akin to the feeling of turning page upon page than to a being carried along by a more sustained narrative development. Then again, that goes hand in hand with the dreaminess of events - also nicely invoked by the blurry, sepia-styled cinematography which frequently prevails, especially at the edges of things.
'Dream-like' is a good way of describing the film as a whole, I think. It's quite weird, in that slightly warped, clocks-melting-over-the-landscape kind of way - at times slightly menacing, but never overpoweringly so and never sustainedly. There are some wonderful creations - the sphinxes are marvellous. The actor who plays Helena looks the part, too. Labyrinth + The Neverending Story + The Nightmare Before Christmas + a strong dash of Englishness + a large dose of something wholly its own = Mirrormask.
