Shutter: Movie Review (2008)

Directed by Masayuki Ochiai, written by Luke Dawson, rated PG-13, 85 minutes.

“Shutter” is that rare movie in which you could change out the third letter in its title for another and have the very place in which the film belongs.

From director Masayuki Ochiai, the movie is based on the popular 2004 Thai horror film of the same name, but much like so many other Asian-horror imports, from “The Ring” to “The Grudge” series and beyond, too much of what worked in the original is lost in translation.

Joshua Jackson and Rachael Taylor are Ben and Jane, a recently married couple who leave the States for Tokyo, where they plan to enjoy a festive honeymoon and where Ben, an annoying, self-involved photographer, also will work on a high-end fashion shoot.

It all goes sour when Jane, roaring through the dark just outside Mt. Fuji, runs over a woman before her car veers and slams into a tree. Trouble is, when she and Ben snap out of it, there’s no sign of the woman, who perhaps, like a wounded deer, ran off into the woods and out of the movie forever.

While that would have been a shrewd career movie, it’s unfortunately not the case.

Turns out the woman is pale Megumi (Megumi Okina), who starts to make appearances in other, more unnerving ways, particularly when Ben and Jane find her lurking about in smudgy images of Ben’s otherwise swell photography.

It’s at this point that the movie introduces audiences to the idea of “spirit photography,” an event in which images of the dead are caught on film, usually with menacing grimaces, gaping mouths or with cold, empty eyes.

The idea of the dead showing up to darken one’s photos is creepy, sure, if not exactly fresh. Still, the film runs with it as if it’s just found the brass ring of something new and unexplored. Soon, Megumi is causing all sorts of predictable havoc, popping up in mirrors and shaking Jane awake in her darkest nightmares. The reason? Apparently, Megumi has something critical to say to Jane, but just what that is, well, that’s best left for you.

“Shutter” isn’t the worst horror movie of late--it isn’t, after all, as bad as “The Eye.” But in spite of squeaking out a few individual scenes of so-so horror, none of those scenes compensate for what’s essentially an uninspired movie that doles out the stock cliches with lackluster zeal and with barely an imagination of its own.

Grade: D