A Reflection of Fear belongs to a group of pre-slasher horror movies from the late '60s/early '70s, when Psycho's influence was more psychological than visual. They revolve around perverted puberty, films where the killers/monsters had been screwed up during adolescence -- usually from a parental figure -- so that sex becomes a physical threat that they defend themselves from by annihilating the bodies of others. With a final twist that out-skeezes them all, Reflection is a profoundly unsettling masterpiece of the form. Sondra Locke embodies a young adult still acting like a little girl; her costumes, a mixture of stifling Victorian lace and short skirts, further captures the extreme dualities of her nature. Beneath the summery idyll backdrop, the film hums with unsettled menace, punctuated by well-orchestrated murder sequences. One of noted cinematographer William Fraker's few directorial efforts and shot by Laszlo Kovacs through the gauzy glow of a Hallmark filter, it anticipates Carrie as a depiction of a drawn-out girlhood stagnating and stifled into a Gothic nightmare.
