Shutter, despite appearances, isn't just another Japanese horror film remade for Hollywood. It's a Thai horror film remade for Hollywood by a Japanese director. This slight departure doesn't change the fact that we are in familiar territory here. Ben (Joshua Jackson, Pacey in Dawson's Creek) and his new wife, Jane (Rachael Taylor), move to Tokyo, where he has a job as a photographer. Driving in the countryside late one cold night, they hit a woman (Megumi Okina) who is standing in the middle of the road in a thin summer dress. When they regain consciousness, she is gone and Ben convinces Jane to forget about the accident. They return to the city, but start to see the woman following them. Then strange images begin to appear in Ben's photographs. If you take Samara crawling out of the television in 2002's The Ring as the high water mark for scary Japanese ghost women, Megumi's antics are feeble by comparison. She's troubling and slightly annoying rather than terrifying - more like a bad relationship dragging on from the other side of the grave than anything else. It's done reasonably effectively, with a few chills but little heart, and the denouement is painfully clunky. The film's top tip: if you ever do something really terrible, don't keep a laptop full of digital photos of the incident in your flat.
Shutter
It's done reasonably effectively, with a few chills but little heart, and the denouement is painfully clunky.
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