Shutter

(2008)**
Following a night of drinking with friends, Pacey and his wife Jane race home on a dark stretch of road. After taking her eyes off the road for a moment Jane looks up just in time to see a woman standing in the road. Even quick reflexes can’t prevent Jane from striking the woman at full speed. The car veers into a tree and the two are briefly knocked unconscious. Upon awaking Jane wants to help the woman she believes she struck. Pacey says nothin’ doin’ and refuses to allow her to look for the now-missing woman. When Pacey later develops some vacation photos he finds that they contain strange shadows, effectively ruining his shots. Although Pacey chalks the ruined photos up to a light leak in the camera, Jane begins to take a closer look once two of Pacey’s friends die from suicide. Jane’s sleuthing reveals that a spirit is haunting them, but why?

"Stop calling me Pacey!"

This crappy ghost story remake attempts to combine two elements that I normally love in horror movies, the vengeful ghost and multimedia. There’s nothing I find creepier in a horror movie than when people watch tapes or inspect photographs for clues to eerie happenings – Shutter does both of these things quite terribly. The vengeful ghost girl has been done to death making this film derivative. It’s only when a director is able to mine additional scares out of this long in the tooth idea is it worth doing. Just check out the lame chase sequence near the end of the film – if there’s one thing we learned from The Ring, you can’t outrun a ghost, silly.

I don’t like the director’s name, Masayuki Ochiai


"How ya doin?"

Stupid Pacey, how I loathe you. Watching J-horror and an American remake of a J-horror film back-to-back is the best way to illustrate why American horror for the most part sucks. For every subtle, eerie moment in the original Shutter, it’s American counterpart sledgehammers the scares into you with loud screeching music, over-explanation, and shots that linger too long on creepy imagery. Creepy ghost girls are only creepy if you flash them for a moment. Long lingering shots, such as those found in the Shutter remake completely neuters your fear reaction. It’s like, “Oh, wow, that’s scary…, uh, is that a mole?”