MANILA, Philippines?This week, swooning will be farthest from the minds of Judy Ann Santos, Dennis Trillo and Kiefer Sutherland?s fans. In Jun Lana?s ?Mag-ingat Ka Sa...Kulam? and Alexandre Aja?s ?Mirrors,? Juday and company are giving horror-loving moviegoers something to scream and squirm about:

In ?Mirrors,? Aja?s Hollywood adaptation of Sung-Ho Kim?s 2003 Korean chiller, ?Into the Mirror,? Sutherland plays former NYPD detective, Ben Carson, a recovering alcoholic who?s on the verge of losing his family?and sanity?after a botched rescue attempt results in the fatal shooting of a colleague. The beleaguered ex-cop soon realizes that there?s more to his troubles than post-traumatic stress and a shaky marriage.

Night watchman

Raring to get on with his life, Ben takes a job as a night watchman at an old luxury department store that recently burned down. But, the building?s charred remains aren?t the only things that keep him company in the wee hours of the night.

After receiving a strange package from the murdered night watchman he replaced, he learns that, more than five decades earlier, the department store used to be a psychiatric facility that employed unorthodox experimental methods to treat schizophrenia?and the site of a massacre that led to its closure!

Aja doesn?t have much originality in his directorial bones, but the 30-year-old Cannes-nominated filmmaker (2003?s ?High Tension?) knows how to put his technical flair to good use. While the Korean original is more cohesive, Aja?s slick and inventive visual style nevertheless gives the Hollywood version a grittier and edgier coating.

However, it curiously does away with ?Into the Mirror?s? intriguing backstory about twins?which is a shame.

Giving the film its thespic boost is Kiefer Sutherland, whose vulnerability makes the film more accessible to viewers.

But, like the Pang brothers? recent remake of ?Bangkok Dangerous,? the movie further proves that Hollywood seldom gets its remakes of Asian cinematic crowd-pleasers right. A notable exception is Andrew Lau and Alan Mak?s ?Infernal Affairs.?

Twins and the occult are also at the core of Jun Lana?s ?Mag-ingat Ka Sa...Kulam,? which appears to loosely borrow its premise from last year?s ?Alone,? Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom?s Thai chiller about conjoined twins.

Judy Ann Santos plays Mira, the self-absorbed wife of Paul (Dennis Trillo). She suffers from post-traumatic amnesia after a vehicular accident.

Secrets

As she slowly recovers from memory lapses, snippets of information begin to reveal secrets from her dark past: A scorned lover, an angry witchcraft-practicing mother, an abandoned identical twin, Maria (also played by Santos), and a demonic legacy! Can Mira alter the course of destiny and emerge unscathed by the forces of evil?

Lana knows how to tell a coherent story, but the first half of the production is hobbled by too many overused narrative strands that only clutter an otherwise serviceable exposition. Instead of creating an atmosphere of creeping danger or lingering doom (which is what makes Chito Rono?s horror flicks very effective), ?Kulam? delivers its scare tactics in quick, superficial jolts, so you?ll see its characters get continually aroused from nightmares or terrified by repetitive visions of a cadaveric presence. Alas, too much is not a good thing.