Shutter's bad exposure; SHUTTER 4/10 In a nutshell: Flat remake that fails to offer a fright

Huddersfield Daily Examiner (Huddersfield, England), May 19, 2008

A SIA is the birthplace of some of the biggest electronics and technology companies, so it's fitting that the continent's filmmakers should conjure modern day nightmares from this economic boom.

In The Ring and its sequels, the humble video recorder whirred with demonic intent as a portal for a murderous, vengeful spectre; the mobile phone took on a similarly ghoulish role in One Missed Call.

Now, the digital camera bridges the divide between the living and dead in the American remake of the 2004 Thai horror-thriller Shutter.

Screenwriter Luke Dawson transplants the ghostly goings-on to the streets of Tokyo, where the phenomenon of spirit photography - capturing images of the departed on film - is firmly engrained in the culture.

Austere Japanese locales add to the alienation of the heroine, who doesn't speak the language or understand the customs.

Dawson leaves the central narrative virtually untouched, including a thrilling sequence in a darkened photographer's studio during a power outage, the scene lit by blinding camera flashes.

Explosions of light reveal a ghost stalking its disoriented prey while in the eerie pitch black, sound effects reveal the desperate efforts of the character to escape the room and the ethereal pursuer.

Fashion photographer Benjamin Shaw (Joshua Jackson) and his wife Jane (Rachael Taylor) travel to Japan, where Ben has worked before, for a lucrative assignment.

During the drive to Mount Fuji, the couple is involved in a car accident: Jane collides with a girl who steps into the middle of the road but the figure vanishes without trace.

The lovebirds proceed, a little shaken, to Tokyo where agency boss and good friend Bruno (David Denman) sets them up in an apartment above the studio where Ben will mastermind the advertising campaign.

During the day, he is on set, marshalling beautiful models and a close-knit team including pal Adam (John Hensley) while his wife explores the city.

Jane begins to suffer nightmarish visions of, the girl she is convinced they knocked down that fateful night (Megumi Okina).

Ben is sceptical until Megumi's spirit causes blurring to his photographs, thereby jeopardising the entire shoot.

Shutter is an underdeveloped reprint of a ho-hum journey into the paranormal, that wasn't particularly scary in its original incarnation.

Jackson and Taylor don't share any palpable screen chemistry, undermining Ben's mounting concern for his wife's wellbeing ("I can get another job but I will not risk you!").

Indeed, in the absence of any indication that the newlyweds care deeply for one another, we struggle to muster genuine concern for them too.

Aside from the bravura studio sequence, director Masayuki Ochiai fails to set our pulses racing and he tips the wink far too early on the climactic twist.

Some of the dialogue is dreadful, such as one character's confession about a secret from the past that has us snorting with derision.

Say cheesy!

CAPTION(S):

PICTURE THIS: Rachael Taylor's character Jane knocks over a young woman who mysteriously vanishes in Shutter; BAD PRINT: Joshua Jackson plays Ben