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July 20th, 2008
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Not a pretty picture

Lowering the bar on J-horror remakes
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April 23rd, 2008 issue

By Rachel Shimp

COURTESY PHOTO
Shudder: Ben Shaw (Joshua Jackson) isn't sure he signed up for this.
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Shutter


Directed by Masayuki Ochiai
With Joshua Jackson, Rachael Taylor, Megumi Okina, David Denman, John Hensley and Maya Hazen

For the Post
What would you do if you saw a ghost? In movies, fight and flight go hand-in-hand, with the typical first response of terror and cowering followed at some point by asking the ghost, “What’s up?” There’s always a reason for all that staring and lurking about. Until you find out what they want, it’s just eerie sound effects and false surprises.  
It takes Jane and Benjamin Shaw (Rachael Taylor and Dawson’s Creek’s Joshua Jackson) a long time to get around to that question in Shutter, because one of them thinks they already know the answer. Unfortunately, if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen the spookiest parts. Seeing the film on the big screen is recommended for fans of eerie sound effects and false surprises — and for anyone interested in why, not how, the Shaws are being spooked.
Shutter is a remake of the 2004 Thai film by Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom, which did well with J-horror audiences around the world. It’s easy to lump Shutter into that category, since it shares the aesthetic characteristics of Japanese horror — an emphasis on the psychological and a slow, tension-building pace.
Shutter is the latest in a string of such remakes this decade, following Ju-On: The Grudge in 2004 and The Ring (Ringu) in 2002, which were legitimately terrifying. Since then, the quality bar seems to be dropping lower and lower, with the production of several less successful updates, such as on Takashi Miike’s One Missed Call this year.
If you’re not hooked already, Shutter is a decent enough opportunity to sample the genre. It opens in Brooklyn with Jane’s marriage to Ben, a photographer who’s just gotten an assignment in Tokyo. Hours after their ceremony, they’re on the plane to Japan and their new life together. While the updated The Ring was just as scary set in America’s mist-shrouded Pacific Northwest as it was in Japan, the best thing Shutter director Masayuki Ochiai (Parasite Eve) did was move the action back to its origin. Putting the main characters outside their element adds a level of helplessness and dread to the proceedings. Ben speaks business Japanese, but nothing makes sense to Jane, from the subway system to social etiquette. Getting lost in Tokyo isn’t an option, it’s a certainty.
The Shaws experience an accident on the way to their honeymoon cabin near Mt. Fuji that haunts Jane for weeks. Her husband chalks it up to the stress of moving and settling in. But  then Jane notices cirrus cloud-shaped blurs on her honeymoon pictures, and on some of Ben’s editorial work. It doesn’t take her long to guess that they aren’t the result of smudges or light leaks. She investigates the pictures with a friend at a spirit photography magazine, where most of the work is faked, and with a psychic. By this time, her heightened awareness has opened doors. Now nothing is as it seems.
Some of the most effective ghost stories, like The Others and The Sixth Sense, keep the spirit and physical worlds separate. In those two films, communication is electric and palpable but limited, because the living and the dead can’t physically touch. Recent J-horror films blur those boundaries, allowing the spirits to terrorize their human counterparts like flesh-and-blood psychos. Lots of these kinds of actions in Shutter seem tacked on for shock value.
But then, nothing has to make sense. The skeletal dialogue of Shutter (already slight at 85 minutes) makes the film’s success more contingent on its atmosphere. The Shaws’ spacious, modern loft is an excellent platform for creepy situations — and what’s a better one than a darkroom? One scene in Ben’s studio is shown in a series of flashes, illuminating a sickening moment of confusion and fear.
Shutter isn’t the smartest or most stylish example of its genre. But there are enough interesting details to make you curious about what develops.
Rachel Shimp can be reached at
rshimp@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (23/04/2008):

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