Review - Shutter

I'm not ashamed to admit that I am a fan of Asian horror remakes. I love the imagery of The Ring and even the cheap jumps of The Grudge. Even The Eye appealed to me. Admittedly, none of these movies are great film masterpieces but I usually find myself entertained and more often than not I find myself at least making sure the dog is close by if I need some reassurance.
However, Shutter was a dissapointment on every level. The premise, despite haing the potential to lead to a few interesting moments, is not even remotely original and feels like a thousand other movies. Considering the fact that the movie never actually leads to any of these possible interesting moments an uninteresting premise is the kiss of the death but just in case you weren't convinced, Masayuki Ochiai does everything he can to make you hate this movie.

His directing is clumsy; he exchanges the claustraphobic, alien atmosphere of other horror remakes for what looks like something filmed by drunk cameramen. With the exception of one scene, this film is so visually defunct that I could barely decipher what was happening. The camera focuses on objects that have no role in the plot and significant character interactions happen off-screen and the audience never sees what happened. Ochiai does try to make good use of the light/dark aspect of photography and in one genuinely frightening scene the lights go out and we are shown the action through one of the cameras flashes. Unfortunately, not a single scene in the film lives up to the promise of this one.

As if all of that wasn't bad enough the screenplay feels like i was written by a 15 year old. The big "twist" is so blatantly obvious as soon as the character is introduced that by the time it actually came around I was earnestly pleading with God for an ending that I couldn't have written in a drunken stupor. Even the lead actors seemed bored throughout the film, just going through the motions until its over. The only time Joshua Jackson proves he is capable of emoting is during his brief almost-sex scene with Rachael Taylor. It's interesting how much film mirrors real-life. I'm normally not one for gratuitous sex scenes but I was hoping for it in this movie just so I would have something to look at.

The worst part about this whole experience was how terribly familiar it was. Really? No one can think of a better reason for a ghost to be around than rape, murder, blah blah blah.....Ghosts are boring or at least the one ghost that keeps haunting every movie I watch is boring. Is it really that much to ask for a little creativity? At this point I would be happy with a movie about a ghost who haunted someone because he didn't like their haircut. At least it would be something that wasn't 110% foreseeable.