Shutter (2008)

Perhaps I just don’t like Joshua Jackson, maybe I’m not supposed to for this movie, I don’t know. Anyway, in the likeness of Ringu and Ju-on, Shutter uses the creepiness of an Asian woman with a bad haircut to tell a story of pain and suffering. You guessed it, she’s seeking revenge for her untimely death via her unhappy disposition and shitty attitude.

I’ll give Masayuki Ochiai the director’s “3rd place” award next to Hideo Nakata (Ringu) and Takashi Shimizu (Ju-on). Though the movie has it’s moments of “wow that was creepy”, the story line is pretty predictable and it’s really a bit of a pain to sit through.

I did like the medium format camera Benjamin Shaw (Jackson) uses throughout the film, which captures the ghostly presence haunting him; but that’s about it. Shutter goes through the motions of creepy thriller movies featuring disgruntled dead though: creepy woman in a chair (check), mistaking the dead woman for the living wife in bed and/or at work (check), ominous sounds when looking at plot points – photographs (check), dark stairwell and/or walkway scene (check), blue filter applied in post-processing of the film (check).

Aside the Shutter being formulaic, it was done pretty poorly. I’m assuming Mirrors (a Korean horror movie remake – Geoul Sokeuro) is going to be the same formula, but that’ll probably not be the case – which my pessimistic self will just see that as an attempt to not follow the formula deliberately… and that’ll make it predictable as well. There’s no winning here, these folks just need to do something “new”.

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