Sitting in the editing room with director Alexandre Aja (High Tension, The Hills Have Eyes) for a few hours is an exhilarating experience. He?s a horror fan first, director second, and I could just pick his brain about the genre for hours. But that?s not why we?re here. I?m sitting in an editing bay on the Paramount Lot with Aja, longtime writing partner Gregory Levasseur and editor, mysteriously known as Baxter. And you know what? These are three really cool guys. ?We're happy, we are three French guys in LA doing whatever we want? Aja beams with pride and confidence as we all sit down with our coffee. Aja?s first feature, High Tension, was a film festival favorite that drove genre fans wild, myself included. When the US studios got a hold of the flick, they butchered it with a theatrical release that boasted a watered down dubbed cut of the film. ?I don?t know what they did with that dub? Aja tells us, but for anyone who?s seen the US theatrical version, it tells a tale different than Aja had originally intended.

Next up for Aja was a remake of the Wes Craven flick, The Hills Have Eyes. Aja admits that the shoot in Morocco was difficult, but he seems to pride himself on making the seemingly impossible, possible. "We were finishing The Hills Have Eyes and Regency sent a script, we didn't even know about the Korean movie it's not really very interesting but the script dealing with something that was so obvious like the underground parking garage in P2 we all have relation to the mirrors, I was reading a study how many times a man or woman looks at himself/herself a day in mirrors. It's a lot, because you don't only have the mirrors you have the rear view mirrors, window, building, you have everything a lot of mirrors and we were wondering let's say tomorrow mirrors stopped reflecting what they were supposed to reflect and started showing us things you were not supposed to see. And that was the click, the idea that started. We were not happy at all with the script and then we asked to see the Korean movie and we watched the Korean movie and liked the opening scene and maybe for another scene in the movie and that's it. We really didn't like the idea of the story like the cliche of the girl being killed getting revenge through being a ghost the mirrors; it?s just the mirrors that were an element that we really liked."

But what was it about the original film that really struck a chord? "It was basically a scene where a girl (very close to the opening scene in P2) was leaving the building and she went to the restroom and when she got down her reflection was staying up. So your reflection is getting out of sync with yourself and can make you do stuff that you don't want to do. This was the same very cool kinda concept and we used that."

It?s time for us to watch the first scene of the film. A man, appearing to be a security guard is running scared in a dingy subway tunnel. He winds up in a locker room, doors wildly swinging open and shut, his reflection appears to have been chasing him. He begs for sympathy and explains that he wasn?t trying to run away. He even goes so far as to try and gently wipe the cracks in the mirror ?better?. He picks up a shard of broken mirror, his reflection slits his throat as his neck slowly splits open blood squirting everywhere. Aja interjects, ?It's kind of like the Freddy Krueger rule like what Freddy does to you during your sleep really happens.?

The next scene involves Kiefer Sutherland wandering a dilapidated department store tracking a young woman?s screams. He comes across the victim who?s bruised and battered and Aja pauses the scene giving us a grin, ?That?s not finished yet, we?re going to add some stuff to make her bubble.? Baxter scans through some more of the flick and we?re shown another scene that I?m going to keep under wraps for now, but trust me when I tell you that it?s an incredible gore effect that left me slack jawed and excited for more, which led me to my next question.

So is it Safe to assume you are going for a hard 'R' for this film?

"Yes, yes."

Do you prepare for the MPAA onslaught by over shooting the gore scenes?

"Yeah, I mean basically we are covering ourselves for a lot. The problem with the MPAA is that they don?t have the same sense of reality that we have. I really think they have a bad take on violence. Just by cutting all the blood they are making violence more common and doing the opposite of what they should do. We're not shooting necessarily over the top just to shoot over the top whatever we think is cool we just don't censor ourselves because we know that we'll fight the MPAA. We learned from The Hills Have Eyes when you submit the movie you really have to submit lots because they will ask you to cut back. And we just won the fight with the MPAA so we are happy, I don't see an unrated directors cut coming, this is our cut of the film."

OK, so there won?t be an unrated director?s cut on DVD, but does Aja think about the DVD release while filming? Aja continues ?We're bored with the EPK bullshit you find on DVDs, on every movie we're hiring a behind the scenes director we have like 35 hours of behind the scenes on Mirrors.?

Aja continues to tell us that having Kiefer Sutherland on board not only as star, but executive producer was really important to completing the film.

?The movie couldn't exist w/out Kiefer because it's not very high budget so you need someone and Kiefer has a long history with genre. Jack Bauer, Lost Boys, Freeway, Dark City, he loves the genre. When we were looking for a big name, we were told by all the agencies, don't even think about it. Kiefer heard about the project and I think he just fell in love with the subject and the idea of the movie. He was tough with the studio, but great with us, he was protecting us. He was the godfather of the movie. He was here to be sure that we were delivering exactly the kind of movie that he wanted to see. He was here to protect us he was really our guardian angel. The studio would come and say ?Do we really need that scene?? and Keifer was like this is really important. The star that he is he has such power on the studio."

Aja explains that that they?ve already had a few test screenings with two different endings and luckily, audiences went wild for the Aja preferred ending. ?It was really epic, quite hard, the whole ending is really big action? at one point Aja even throws out a Die Hard comparison. Can?t wait to see how that figures in.

Asian remakes have had such a bad rap recently I couldn?t help but ask Aja if he has concerns. What if people are expecting another watered down PG-13 studio shit-fest?

?A lot of concerns and before being filmmakers we are part of the core audience and take pleasure in seeing we are reading what's going on online, we are reading you guys and we read the people in the forums. It's not a remake. The Hills Have Eyes is a remake. Same character, same plot, background story. From the beginning to the end it's a remake, here is not a remake and Piranha is not a remake. Of course it's easy when you just read the title and to say 'Oh, it's a remake' - no it's not. We reinvented the story, created new characters we changed all the scenes. It's based on a concept from a guy in Korea but that's it.

But basically when you think about it with more distance, mirrors make more sense, mirrors are a part of our culture, our history since the beginning of time it's really universal. It's not as far fetched. With a simple goal that after you go home you will watch yourself in a different way. You won't be comfortable in front of your own image because you think something will happen. What makes a great horror movie is when you leave the theater and the fear is following you. Like in the first Elm Street. When you are a teenager, you are just so scared about falling asleep. Or when you watch Jaws you are scared of going in any kind of water. Even a pool (laughs) you explain there is no shark in the pool, it doesn't change anything.

You're dealing with something that was already in your subconscious. That's why they are so powerful. And that's why making a movie about mirrors was so obvious. There's something to reveal here, we all have a strange relation to mirrors. I do have concerns about people putting the movie into a category before seeing it.

We are making only what we would like to see. The studios could make the biggest offer and we passed on a lot of studio movies and projects because we were not excited as a moviegoer to see them. And that's why we chose this one and spent a year writing the script. It's true I have concerns when I read someone saying 'Yeah, it's just another remake.' It's gonna be the same kind of scheme. When you think about it you have the video tape, the camera, the wig, cell phone, the eye (laughs) and OK, now you have 'the mirrors' and what will be next? The toothbrush?"

Mirrors hits theaters August 15th, stay tuned for more Mirrors on FEARnet and check out more Aja with news on his Piranha 'remake'.