Shutter (2008)

Shutter (2004) was not a great horror film but it was a competent one.It was entertaining and it had some creepy moments.But,now,we have another unnecessary Hollywood remake.Shutter (2008) is a crap.Simple as that.The ''scary'' moments produced accidental laughs on me.But,in spite of laughing a little bit,this movie enormously bored me.The special effects are pathetic.The actors show zero conviction on their roles.Director Masayuki Ochiai made a mercenary work.The only positive thing I can find in this crap is that the ending from the original film was not changed.Shutter is an unnecessary remake.In summary,this is another crappy remake.Hollywood MUST stop with this remakes.

Fmovies: Take it as it is. A derivative, leaden, mind-numbingly simplified remake of a superior original. That's not to say that it's genuinely decent on its own merits if you've not already seen 2004's seminal Thai-horror "Shutter" that reignited that country's interest in producing slow burning, luxuriously made horror films. Interestingly, and perhaps even fittingly, the Hollywood machine that devours and regurgitates the recent slate of J-Horror films has turned its sights on "Shutter", which arguably finds its core roots in Japan's horror conventions in its vengeful, waifish ghost girl tormenting the living by manifesting through various electronic mediums. So what Masayuki Ochiai's adaptation essentially becomes is a carbon copy of copy.

American photographer Ben Shaw (Joshua Jackson) and his blonde schoolteacher bride Jane (Rachael Taylor) go straight from nuptials to a working honeymoon in Japan, natch, because America just isn't as scary to Americans as Asia is. Before heading off to Ben's lucrative assignment in Tokyo, the newly minted couple heads to a remote countryside inn when a brief accident derails Jane's constitution and compels her to seek out answers led by a phantasmal presence in photographs and a newly discovered knowledge of spirit photography.

Unremarkably, Luke Dawson's screenplay omits and appends details to its basic premise. The original uses the stark disassociation of city living to intensify the eeriness of isolation, and the idea that we never really see what we think we know. Dawson's script transplants the couple to a different country, ramping up the cultural alienation and exoticism of another culture. It's not dissimilar to what we've already seen in "The Grudge" remakes.

Even as Ochiai's direction is comparatively surefooted and patient with the camera choosing to hang on to a scene instead of ludicrously harping on jump-cuts and eyeball-rattling shots that bounce off the wall, the film feels unambitiously stale. "Shutter" goes through the motions of dourly checking off look-behind-you set pieces and reflections on windows. The plotting and performances are so apparent; you'd find yourself a couple of steps ahead of the film's central faux-mystery. While the bizarre symbiotic relationship audiences have with particularly mediocre remakes of Asian horror films should still live on after this, what remains most terrifying is how textbook simple and undemanding the film-making has become for films of its ilk.

I think this movie shows exactly how Hollywood sees America's youth. Compelled by fashionably dressed model women, sometimes half naked, bright colors, spooky images and scenes that are only there to make you jump. Oh... and I forgot, no brains. They think you're all idiots so they give you this cliché garbage.

Skinny attractive woman who couldn't act if it were cursed on her, walks around always looking fresh and dumb in designer clothes. This movie is about as intelligent as a log. Everything seems forced and none of it is original or done in a compelling way. I have to wonder if English was the native language of the director since most of the dialog is unacceptably terrible. Many times I cringed or laughed at things that I knew weren't meant to have that kind of reaction.

Poorly paced, poorly written, poorly acted, the effects are okay. I haven't seen the original, but conceptually, this movie could have been great if it were done the right way. Unfortunately, it was not. F-

Shutter fmovies. This was a surprisingly good, old fashioned ghost story.

I haven't seen the original and I'm not a fanboy, so I didn't have any axes to grind going in. The cast is very good if somewhat underutilized, the photography and musical scoring are excellent, and there's a plot twist that caught me completely by surprise.

Watching the previews you'd think this was the one millionth Asian horror with a vengeful female spirit who has long black hair and dark circles under her eyes. There's more than that going on here.

And, without giving any plot points away, the final shot of the film is going to stay with me for a long, long time.

Sure, this isn't the most original piece of work ever. It's part of a long tradition of ghost stories. But the makers had the sense to keep it to 85 minutes so it's over before you really begin to think how familiar some of the material is.

After seeing this movie, I was shocked by the comments. The movie wasn't that bad at all.

In the beginning I wasn't sure what to think. It was rather scary, and the plot itself made my question whether I saw this movie or not already. It reminded me of similar movies like the grudge.

But let's face it, the end was surprising and not in any way predictable.

I like the movie. I'll see it again someday.

I gave it a six because it was very entertaining, surprising, but it wont go into history as a masterpiece.

See this movie if you want to enjoy yourself, be scared, be excited and you wont regret it.

This is a remake of a good Thai horror movie that was released back in 2004. I really enjoyed the original movie and I recommend it to everyone. Why did they need to do a remake of a movie that was released only 4 years ago? Did they think they can improve it in some way? Not only did they not improve it, they made it worse than the original in many ways. The brilliant music and sounds from the original are gone, the ghost is less scary, is shown more often, and it seems less menacing (at one step the ghost is even singing!), the acting is worse, and the characters are less believable than in the original.

The producers introduced a few new elements hoping to make the movie more scary, but in fact they made it more disgusting (the flies for example). The original movie was full of clichés, but this one is even more so. The most brilliant part of the original movie was the ending. In the remake, they simply copied every scene from the last part of the movie, but with less talent and less impressive results.

So, I return to my original question: why did they need to do a remake? What was the problem with the original movie released only 4 years before this one? The fact that the main actors were Asians and that they didn't speak English? Or more likely, the fact that Hollywood, which is apparently all out of ideas, couldn't let a good story fly by them without them making money out of it?