Paula Patton, director Alexandre Aja and Kiefer Sutherland on the "creepy" Romanian set of the horror thriller Mirrors.

SAN DIEGO, Calif. -- Breakfast is barely over but Kiefer Sutherland's mind is already on bisected body parts and gore-splattered death.

This is what he gets for teaming with Alexandre Aja, the French horror auteur responsible for the graphically violent High Tension and The Hills Have Eyes remake.

"It's a very funny topic to deal with first thing in the morning," Sutherland says with a smile to a roomful of journalists at the Hard Rock Hotel.

He should know.

The Canadian star of 24 agreed to make Aja's latest, the supernatural shocker Mirrors, during similarly early hours last year.

"I said, 'I believe I can make you care about this guy, but you have to guarantee me you can scare the s--t out of everybody,' " Sutherland remembers.

"And he smiled and said, 'Absolutely.' That was it literally."

Opening today, the thriller stars Sutherland as a disgraced cop who takes a job as a night watchman at the burned-out ruins of a department store.

Patrolling the remains of the store, he begins to suspect there are murderous entities at work within the store's ornate mirrors. Things get worse when they follow him home.

"It's pretty gruesome, graphic and violent," enthuses Aja.

Sutherland, who you would think might want to do a rom-com after six intense seasons of 24, says he was attracted to both the tormented hero -- but more by the chance to be involved in a flat-out horror-fest.

"When I was growing up, certainly there wasn't a genre of film that could give you any stronger or visceral reaction ... Also (Mirrors) harkens back to the 1970s horror films which dealt with things much differently ... (Movies such as) The Amityville Horror, The Exorcist, The Omen. These had character-driven plots. The horror came from an affection you had for a character combined with this horrific circumstance they are put in.

"Even without the horror elements, this played like an unbelievably strong family drama. There was the idea of melding these two worlds -- this story of a man trying to put his family back together, combined with the horrific things that happen to him."

And if mirror-dwelling demons sound like a stretch, does it matter?

Aja, who introduces grisly sequences with the giddiness of a kid who just ate his first worm, is on a squirm-in-your-seat mission.

He is especially fond of what he calls the film's "jaw-dropper" -- in which Amy Smart's mouth opens wide.

Very, very wide.

"I'd done one other horror film but nothing like this," understates the Road Trip and Crank actress.

"I had this prosthetic jaw made and it took hours to put it on and to make it look just right. It was fun walking around with this crazy ugly prosthetic on my face and having people freak out."

Less fun?

Shooting in an abandoned academy of science building in Romania, where the movie was shot.

"It was just creepy. The space itself was frightening. It definitely felt haunted."

With Mirrors about to be released, Aja has already zeroed in on his next project: a 3D remake of the 1970s Jaws knockoff Piranha.

"The new technology is going to create a tool stronger than anything else we have seen before. It is going to create a revolution in horror."

At least the 29-year-old director hopes so.

It turns out what scares Aja most aren't homicidal spirits or mutant cannibals, but the post-modern terror flicks of the 1990s.

"I hope (the next evolution of horror) is not going to be the comeback of the Scream slasher film which was ironic and not scary at all."

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