On Screen
Shutter
BY Adam Nayman March 21, 2008 02:03
Shutter is probably not going to be the last American remake of an Asian horror film — its source material is Thai if you care — but it feels like an endpoint all the same, making the dullest and most superfluous iteration yet of the lurking-dead-girl-torments-the-living storyline.
The living in this case are an American photographer (Joshua Jackson) and his blonde new bride (Rachael Taylor) who have taken a working honeymoon in Japan. One of them harbors a secret skeezy enough to incur some supernatural wrath: Shutter’s gimmick is that the ghost — a wan, wandering wraith with dark straight hair, natch — goes about inserting herself in photos. Luke Dawson’s screenplay offers some exposition about spirit photography (which, like Spinal Tap, is apparently big in Japan), but where a more ambitious film might have limited its star specter’s appearances to snapshot cameos — imagine a modern gloss on the classic Night Gallery episode with the ever-changing painting — Shutter glumly runs through the usual she’s-right-behind-you-turn-around set pieces. There is one sore-thumb digression: an aspiring model in a cowboy hat and lingerie playfully riding a sofa. Now that’s something I don’t remember happening in The Ring.
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