SHUTTER (2008)

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The recent trend of american adaptations based on japanese horror films has steadily gotten worse from the terrible Pulse to the annoying One Missed Call the latest here is Shutter. Based off of a Thai horror film i havent seen Shutter follows a pair of newlyweds being haunted by a ghost whose painful past involves one of the characters think What Lies Beneath and Gothika except far far worse. The storyline does have potential the idea of ghostly images appearing in photographs could very well spawn various creative scenes and terrifying moments but Shutter tries to get by with the bare minimum and just becomes boring and cliche. When it comes to acting it's actually decent at least for the two leads Rachael Taylor is intense and expressive while Joshua Jackson is laid back with malicous personality traits that pop out here and there. The japanese actors are brutal almost like cartoony characters complete with moronic dialogue that only makes them seem more foolish.

The writing is terrible so lazy, so cliche, and just so unimmaginative. Most of the actions and reactions from the characters seem rushed, fake, random, and out of place. The dialogue is terrible as well which is unfortunate because the actors are fairly decent but working with bad writing especially this bad is difficult for anyone to make feel real. The movie follows similar formula's of jump scare flicks like The Grudge but while The Grudge used a unique timeline of events, a suspensful and foreign feeling atmosphere, and creepy make up effects, Shutter doesn't do anything creative ot differant it just tells a bland predictable ghost story. The movie gets so far off course and the "twist" is stupidity at it's best the whole mentality of the characters just shows how lazy and bad writers really can be.

In terms of direction the movie uses some cool stylistic elements a particular scene is filmed in black with only audio but flashes of video like a camera going off on it's own occurs throughout and another scene in which the ghost moves in photos like a flipbook all signs of fairly good direction but just poor writing. Visually the movie is bland with some pretty hotels and buildings here and there but most of the time it's dark but in a boring way no polished visuals, no unique set design, the visual effects don't capture much of a mood and neither does the music. In the end Shutter fits in with all of the other bad asian remakes because of it's awful and random screenplay.

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