Another Day, Another Asian Horror Film Remake: Shutter
Written: Mar 21 '08 (Updated Mar 21 '08)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: It's not totally awful.
Cons: Nothing you haven't seen before.
The Bottom Line: Another unnecessary remake of an Asian horror film.
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| Mike_Bracken's Full Review: Shutter |
As I sit here at my computer, struggling to write this review, I find myself wondering just what’s left to say about Asian girl ghost films and the countless (and seemingly never-ending) remakes of them. I mean, once upon a time, these films were the hottest thing in horror cinema. I’ll never forget hearing about Ringu long before it was available in America and the lengthy quest I went on to procure a black market copy (nor will I ever forget the disappointment I felt when it ended—which probably should have been a strident warning about things to come…). Japan was going to save us from drab postmodernist horror films with casts comprised of stars from WB television series (which seemed perfectly plausible at the time—Japan was, afterall, the country that loved Cannibal Holocaust and had given us films like the Guinea Pig series as well as Entrails of a Virgin). So, how ironic is it now that Japan (and China, South Korea, and Thailand) churn out one uninspired pissed off Asian Girl Ghost film after another? And isn’t it damn near karmic that these films invariably wind up getting remade in America with people like Joshua Jackson and Sarah Michelle Gellar starring in them? The more things change, the more they stay the same…
The latest remake to shamble up on our shores is Shutter. Shutter was originally a film from Thailand and is arguably one of the top five Asian Girl Ghost Films out there (maybe even top two, competing with South Korea’s A Tale of Two Sisters for the top spot overall—and rest assured, an Americanized version of A Tale of Two Sisters looms on the horizon for those of you who hate subtitles and good movies…). The original film works for a number of different reasons—none of which translate to the American remake. The Thai version was genuinely creepy—they used “real” (as in taken from actual people and not made by the special FX department) ghost photographs, the cinematography, while standard for these sort of films, managed to create a mood of impending doom, and the film’s final shot was terrifyingly beautiful in a poetic way that few other genre films have ever managed.
The Americanized version, on the other hand, looks like every other Asian horror film remake to come along in the past decade. It’s got the muted set design and lighting and color schemes, it’s got a series of jump scares that are as predictable as they are uninspired, and it’s got Joshua Jackson in the lead role—which may well be the scariest thing about this movie by far (and even scarier is Jackson’s stating that he’d like to play Spider-Man if Tobey Maguire leaves the franchise…).
Anyway, the plot revolves around Jackson and his wife Jane (Rachel Taylor, looking almost sickeningly thin), a pair of newlyweds off to honeymoon in Japan. After a horrible car accident, a strange ghostly apparition starts turning up in all their photographs. Give yourself a screenwriter’s credit if you guess that this apparition is an Asian girl with long dark hair and a grudge to settle with one of the newlyweds. From there, the film plays out as a sort of supernatural giallo (like just about every other film in this genre—both remake and original) with Taylor and Jackson trying to solve the mystery while avoiding the angry girl ghost with an agenda. Expect flashbacks, a fairly transparent mystery to solve, and lots of cheap scares and you’ve pretty much pegged the experience.
This isn’t to say that the remake of Shutter is awful—in the pantheon of Asian horror film remakes, it’s decidedly middle of the pack; better than One Missed Call and Dark Water but not quite as good as The Grudge (which is certainly a case of damning something with faint praise). Its greatest shortcoming (other than the acting of Joshua Jackson, who still seems lost in anything that isn’t Dawson’s Creek) is that it’s appearing in America about five years too late. Even the most devoted genre fans are tired of these films by this point and no matter how good a Shutter remake is (or even the original, for that matter), we’ve all been so inundated with these movies that there’s nothing left for them to say or do that we haven’t seen a million times before. What was once an answer to the cliche of the American slasher villains is now just as cliched. Shutter is doomed to failure because it’s more of the same. Of course, it’s also doomed to failure because it’s not a very good film.
So, what’s left to say about these films? Nothing much. The Asian Girl Ghosts films have always been a one-trick pony and the original Shutter only succeeded because it managed to surround the trick with some genuinely creepy ghost pictures and some moody direction. The American remake fails on both those counts, looking far too slick and polished to evoke any kind of real emotion from its audience. Factor in that Joshua Jackson is about as emotive as a piece of lumber and you wind up with a flick that’s destined to be at your local video emporium before Mother’s Day.
Recommended:
No
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