Review: ‘Shutter’ bores with dull plot, flat acting

Directed by: Masayuki Ochiai

Starring: Joshua Jackson, Rachael Taylor, Megumi Okina, David Denman, John Hensley, Maya Hazen

Rated: PG-13

One of the newest sub-genres that Hollywood has been pushing the past few years is the “Asian horror film remake.” It started with “The Ring,” hit its stride with “The Grudge” and “One Missed Call,” and has finally come to the shudder-inducing – not from scares but from bad filmmaking – “Shutter.”

It’s a remake of the 2004 Thai film of the same name. I haven’t seen the original but in doing research imagine it to be a better (maybe even a good) movie.

Outside of its crisp look, supplied by cinematographer Katsumi Yanagishima, there’s little good to say about this Americanized “Shutter.” The acting is flat, the plot is tedious and, even at 86 minutes, it seems interminable.

The movie borrows heavily from other films in the genre, which usually involve something akin to having a ghost in an everyday machine. In “The Ring,” it was a VCR. In “One Missed Call,” it was a cell phone. Here, it’s a camera.

Ben (Joshua Jackson) and Jane (Rachael Taylor) Shaw are newlyweds, on a working honeymoon in Japan. Ben is a world-renowned fashion photographer (who has no idea what Photoshop is) on assignment.

As always happens in this sort of film, the events are set off by something that might be believed but not ever really take place.

Here, with Jane behind the wheel, the couple runs over a young woman who seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Jane insists on going back to check (how nice of her), but Ben seems to know something that makes him want to move on.

They go back, and there’s no body. Jane is shaken. Ben is pensive.

Soon, the real stuff hits the fan.

Ben’s photos are damaged. There are blurs of light in every one. This guy could really use Photoshop.

And even the snapshots that Jane takes of their honeymoon bliss are marred. Something’s going on. Had the couple seen “The Ring” or “The Grudge,” they would have known to get out of the movie right then. But no one, it seems, in movies like this, has ever seen other movies like this.

So they persist. Jane becomes obsessed with the concept of ghost images, and apparently, in Japan, people know all about this phenomenon. There’s even a magazine devoted to it.

Jane sets about getting to the bottom of it all, but we learn that Ben already has his guilty suspicions of what is going on and why. It’s an ugly scenario from his recent past.

It’s a painful and tasteless premise for a film, but it might have worked if in more deft hands than those possessed by director Masayuki Ochiai. “Fatal Attraction” was scary, and there are elements of that film in play here, but they are never explored or explained.

“Shutter” is dumbed down to a fatal degree. If not for the recent ridiculously bad “Jumper,” this would qualify as the worst film of the year so far.

I want my 86 minutes back. If I don’t get that, I guess I’ll just come back and haunt the people who made this movie. I’ll be a blurred streaked in their every frame. That’ll show them.

Jim Wunderle owns Wunderle Sound Services and is a Springfield freelance writer and musician. He can be reached at info@wunderlesound.com.