I liked the old VHS box more than the movie. It has one of those shifting-picture covers; a woman sits in front of a mirror in her underwear, turns and screams at a raven breaking through the glass of the mirror. The mirror does look like the one in the movie; the woman doesn't.
In a prologue, a woman is in a room with nuns, and a mirror covered by a sheet. The mirror distresses her, and she wants it to be destroyed with a knife. One of the nuns scoffs, uncovers it, and loses her sight.
Years later, a young woman dancer and her retarded violinist brother are staying at the same place. A metal/punk band is rehearsing there for some reason, and all get charred during a lightning storm after they bring the mirror out of a closet and uncover it. There are a pair of legs hanging from the ceiling in this room, which can be seen in several scenes in the movie, and I don't know why.
The siblings' parents have died, and they're staying at this nunnery or orphanage where there are no other children. The girl's much older stepsister arrives with her doctor and they try to manipulate her health and mental health in ways that will result in the stepsister obtaining the inheritance (she'd been left out entirely). They hire a janitor (of the nunnery? or elsewhere?) or outsider artist to help them, but he doesn't do much. He's played by William Sanderson, who was in the first movie, but he's playing a different character here.
The dancer falls in love with the mirror, and the brother seems to like it initially, then doesn't. Mostly he whines a lot. A young man named Christian seems to appear and disappear, and he seems to be related to the mirror in some way.
There are some short scenes where some toys are animated that are nicely done, and there's a scene where the dancer's vision is blurred and her bed seems to be undulating that was neat, if brief. I don't know if this was done with a camera or post-production effect, or if they made the bed movie. One of the death scenes copies one of the more memorable scenes from Young Sherlock Holmes (1985).
As others have said, there are dancing scenes in the movie, and there is a raven who keeps showing up to attack people or cause them to have accidents, but there isn't a "raven dance" whatever that might be. Oddly, the title of the movie is Raven Dance. It's the video box cover that is Mirror Mirror 2: "Raven Dance." The end credits say something like "Raven Dance from the tales of Mirror, Mirror."
The ending is really stupid, almost of the "it was all a dream" variety with a slight twist. There's a scene after the last of the credits have rolled of three monks in a room standing by a slanted table covered with candles. One of the monks face cannot be seen at all (the others, only barely), and his right hand seems to be skeletal while his left seems to be fine (one of the characters in the movie does lose a hand...). They seem to be talking backwards. It's only a few seconds long. I have no idea how it connects with the rest of the movie!
I may watch parts three and four sometime, if only to see how they compare.
