ชัตเตอร์ กดติดวิญญาณ (Shutter)

(2004)***1/2

Following a night of drinking with friends, Tun and his girlfriend 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. Realizing what just happened Jane starts to leave the car to help the woman. Tun refuses and demands that she quickly drive away. With no witnesses they should be in the clear, right? When Tun later develops his latest batch of pictures he finds that they contain strange shadows, effectively ruining his shots. Although Tun chalks the ruined photos up to a light leak in the camera, Jane begins to take a closer look once two of Tun’s friends die from suicide. Jane’s sleuthing reveals that a spirit is haunting them, but why?

This nifty ghost story from Thailand combines two elements that I 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 (see above) for clues to eerie happenings – Shutter does both of these things quite effectively. It’s true that the vengeful ghost girl had been done to death making this film derivative, however the director was able to mine additional scares out of this long in the tooth idea. Just check out the 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 love the director’s name, Parkpoom Wongpoom.