Shutter

Plot synopsis:
Shutter tells the story of photographer Ben (Joshua Jackson) and his new wife Jane (Rachael Taylor). The film begins with the couple's wedding, and the audience learns that they are planning to leave their apartment in Brooklyn for Japan, where Ben has been hired to take pictures for a particular client. The couple has made the decision to leave for Japan a few days early, renting a cabin so they can enjoy a shorter honeymoon. In the car on the way to the cabin, Jane gets lost and asks a sleeping Ben to check the map. While attempting to get their bearings, Jane sees a girl walk into the road. She hits the girl, and swerves off the road, crashing the car into a tree. They both fall unconscious. When she awakens, Jane realizes the girl could very well still be laying in the road, and rushes out of the car to find her, Ben on her heels. They find nothing, and Ben thinks that the girl was already found and has gotten the medical help that she would need. He also thinks the injuries weren't life-threatening, as they cannot find any blood or evidence of a collision and wants to call for help. Later, help does arrive for them, and they are able to continue with their travel to the cabin, but Jane is haunted by the image of the girl. Ben's shoulder is bothering him, since the accident. Jane tells him he needs to get it checked out. Ben chooses to ignore it, and at the cabin, they are able to enjoy a few day long honeymoon, and Ben wants to take pictures to record the event.Days later, Ben has to report for work with his friend Bruno (David Denman) Jane accompanies him but is somewhat left to her own devices as Ben needs to meet with the clients right away. We learn that Ben is fluent in Japanese, while Jane is not. Later, the pair are taken to their home, a building of which they are the solo occupants, and also the home of Ben's photography studio. Jane notices an alcove where an old chair sits, and the image sticks with her. After meeting Ben's assistant Seiko (Maya Hazen), Jane again is left to her own devices while Ben works. She eventually gets the photos from the honeymoon, which are full of a mysterious light, and in showing the photos to Ben, makes the realization that something is off with them. Ben simply assumes there was an error with the camera. Seiko mentions that the light is not from a camera error, but from spirit energy. Interested, Jane asks how she knows what the light is, to which Seiko responds that her ex-boyfriend runs a spirit photography magazine. She insists that Jane meet her ex the next day after work, and Ben, hearing that the girls have made plans to go out, jokes that "the girls have a date". That night, Ben, Jane, Bruno, his date and Adam (John Hensley) go out to a traditional Japanese restaurant. Here we learn that Adam is a model agent, but that his motives may not be in the best interest for the models.The next day, Jane heads with Seiko to see the spirit photography magazine Seiko's ex Yoko (Eri Otoguro). While there, Jane learns that the magazine is mostly full of fake photographs, but that 1) a Polaroid picture cannot be faked and 2) a psychic named Murase (Kei Yamamoto) was written up by the magazine for his efforts in analyzing the photos. Later, Jane tells Ben about her visit and asks him to go with her. Ben's shoulder continues to bother him, and he goes to the doctor. While there, he is weighed a couple of times, and the doctor tells him that there is no source of injury, but that he will give him some medicine for the pain. Rattled himself by the presence of the light in some of his work photos which have landed him in hot water with the client and a random encounter with 'someone' in the darkroom, he agrees to travel with Jane to visit Murase.Once at the home of Murase, Jane and Ben show him the photos and tell him that there was an accident and they believe this spirit may be that of the girl Jane hit. Ben serves as translator between the two. Murase takes the photos and begins to speak very emotionally, but Ben does not translate all of what he says, and tells her they are leaving. Ben does tell her that spirits bond with humans when extreme emotions (love, hate, anger, etc) are involved.Jane later looks at the photos of the project that were ruined by the light, and decides to go visit the office building in the photo that the light seems to be around. Armed with a borrowed Polaroid camera from Ben's studio, she heads to the building to take pictures and see if she finds any proof of the spirit's presence in the building. When she gets there, she goes to the floor where the light has gathered, and takes pictures in the empty office. She has her first encounter, and learns the girl's name Megumi Okina through a picture frame that falls on the ground and shatters. Megumi is in the photo and when looking at it, Jane learns that her husband Ben took the photograph.When she confronts Ben about it, he admits that he and Megumi were involved in a relationship, but that she became obsessive and clingy, despite the fact that her traditional Japanese family did not approve of the pair. If anything, the disapproval made Megumi even more clingy to Ben, who was trying his hardest to balance work and his blossoming relationship. Megumi's father, the main person who did not approve of the pair, dies, and Megumi becomes obsessive and even at one point becomes suicidal. Realizing this is too much for him to handle, Ben quits Megumi. Ben, admitting that he never loved her, gets Adam and Bruno to speak to her about the fact that the relationship is over and that she needs to stop following him around. Jane is upset with that, but decides they have to find Megumi. Ben talks to Bruno, who says that he recently saw Megumi on the street, she was pointing at him.Adam is at his photography studio taking pictures of a prospective model, an Australian hostess that he mentioned at the dinner. He asks her to take off her clothing, except her underwear, and goes to get his camera from a box full of scantily-clad women. We get the impression that his motives at this point are not good at all. He begins taking pictures and starts seeing Megumi through the camera lens. He keeps stopping taking pictures, which begins to irritate the model. He is ready to take another picture, and the next thing we see is that the camera lens has shattered in his eye.Meanwhile, Ben and Jane are at Megumi's home looking for evidence of her location. They find her, seemingly having been dead for a long time, as flies and decay have began, along with bottles of potassium cyanide strewn along the floor. They are still in shock over this discovery when Ben receives a call from Bruno about Adam's accident. Ben says that they will meet Bruno at the hospital.After being at the hospital for a while and Bruno does not turn up, Ben calls his cellphone in an effort to find out when he'll get there. Bruno answers but does not say anything, and as the camera pans out, the audience sees that he is slicing up photographs (into shapes of origami) with a razor blade and his hands are all bloody. Ben tells Bruno's voicemail that they desperately need him at the hospital because Adam didn't make it. Ben and Jane leave the hospital and head to Bruno's home to see if he is there.When they arrive, they find all his picture frames are still on the walls, but the photos are all cut up on the table, and that the television is loud and blaring. Ben begins to look around for him, while Jane examines the photos on the table. She sees Bruno standing at the end of the hall, and it appears he is charging at her. Ben calls out to him, and Bruno runs past Jane (who dives out of the way) and jumps off the balcony of his high-rise and goes crashing onto the concrete. He is dead. Ben is visibly distraught.Ben and Jane have decided to return to New York at this point, when in a voiceover, Ben says that Megumi's funeral will be in a few days, she will be cremated, and after the service, they can return home. When they return home to pack things, Jane opens a Fed-Ex that she has received containing photos of their wedding, and Jane makes the statement, "we aren't going anywhere". Megumi is present in their wedding photos. They decide to leave the apartment and go to a hotel to spend the night.That night, Ben is haunted by images of Megumi in the room, her brushing her hair, her looking at him, her sitting on the floor, her initiating sex with him...all while Jane sleeps. He is very upset and somewhat frantic, and the ghost of Megumi confronts him with a kiss, and Jane wakes to find him choking. She watches him choke and attempts to help him, gets caught by the ghost in a curtain and smashed up against a window which cracks. In her desperation, Jane finally yells, "He didn't love you!" to which Megumi stops. Ben is gasping for air, but alive.At Megumi's funeral, her body is cremated. Ben and Jane watch the process and hold hands. They return to New York, where seemingly all is over. However, this is not the case. Ben is out, seemingly at work, when Jane wants to take a picture of the rose petal shaped heart Ben has left her with a disposable camera. However, the camera is full of ready-to-be-developed pictures. She heads out to start her day and takes the camera with her, seemingly to drop it off at a developer. When she returns home, she has the photos in an envelope. While preparing dinner, she opens the envelope and is shocked by what she sees. In the pictures, of her and Ben frolicking around while still in their wedding clothes, the ghost of Megumi is visibly in the photos, crawling towards the couple and eventually standing near a portrait of Jane that (seemingly) Ben took. Jane looks in Ben's belongings for the camera that he used in Japan, and finds the removable drive in the camera, which she loads into the computer, and is digusted by what she finds.When Ben gets home, he can immediately tell something is wrong with Jane. He asks her what is wrong and she opens the laptop and asks him what the photos are of...and how he could do such a thing. We see the picture of Megumi, with Bruno and Adam, in a compromising position. Ben tells Jane that Megumi was crazy, she was obsessed and she wouldn't stop harassing him. So when Bruno and Adam got involved, Adam suggested giving her some pills that were like sleeping pills but a little stronger, and photographing her in compromising positions that they could use to blackmail her against her prim and proper family to finally leave Ben alone. However, when the situation was happening, Ben took the photos but Adam and Bruno (more than likely drunk themselves) took advantage of Megumi and forced themselves on her. (The audience is led to believe this by the comments they make and the fact that they show the look on Ben's face). Ben admits to Jane that the situation got out of control but absolves himself of blame since he never touched her. Jane is digusted, and realizes that Megumi was trying to warn her of the man she loves, that Megumi did not want to harm her at all.She starts to leave him, telling him that she needs time to think and then recants, saying she needs no time to figure out that he's not the person she thought he was and that she's done. Jane departs, leaving Ben alone in the apartment. Ben takes out a Polaroid camera and begins photographing the apartment looking for Megumi. He yells, "Me and you together forever, is that what you want? You got it!" The pictures show nothing, and in anger, he drops the camera and it takes a photo. He picks up the photo and looks at it, and it shows Megumi is sitting on his shoulders. This explains his "injury" and why his shoulder has been hurting him so and why the nurse weighed him multiple times, his weight was that of 275, the weight of two people. In an effort to rid himself of her once and for all, hooks up a large amount of power to a photography light, which he puts to his neck. The power goes out in the building and we hear Ben's screams.The next scene is in a hospital. A nurse is wheeling a tray of food and drink into a room. We see the patient in the room is Ben, who appears completely catatonic, his head slung over and head closely shaved. The nurse injects his arm with a needle, sets the food down on the table and leaves the room, locking the door behind her. As it closes, we see that the spirit of Megumi is hugging Ben, causing him to be slumped over.

Tags: revenge, flashback

Review:
In North America, after getting married, the photographer Benjamin Shaw (Joshua Jackson) and his wife Jane (Rachel Taylor) travel to Japan for a job opportunity with Ben's friends Bruno (David Denman) and Adam (John Hensley).
Jane investigates and finds that the victim was Ben's former shy and weird girlfriend Megumi Tanaka (Megumi Okina), who worked as translator for Ben. Later Jane discloses deep and hidden secrets about the relationship of Megumi, Ben and his friends Bruno and Adam.The American version of "Shutter" is a mediocre remake of a great Asian horror movie.
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.
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..
Shutter is also another "ghost in the machine" story, except this time the machine is a camera.The trouble is there is absolutely nothing scary about this movie .
Director Masayuki Ochiai has failed miserably to achieve anything worth while and it's a film that will fade from the memory very fast indeed.The PG-13 rating says it all, while opening the gates to bored teenagers it will turn hardcore horror aficionados in the other direction.I don't know about you but i want my Horror movies to be 18 rated and nothing less.3 out of 10.
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.
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.
We've all seen too many (Asian) horror movies already in which white-faced spirits spontaneously appear & disappear again, and the mystery is always build up towards a point where the script can't possibly fulfill the audience's anticipations anymore.
If you guys have times, I suggest watching the ORIGINAL.Here' the Youtube's Link.http://youtube.com/watch?v=JLxVRidi3zM Part - - 1/10 (with subtitle) http://youtube.com/watch?v=yByiyD_VK40 - - 1/10 (with subtitle) Both links are the same movie but with different posts.I've watched the remake just few days ago.I quite like something in it.The ending is really funny, after Ben found out why he's been neck ache.The remake gives some credits to the original such as the Name of Jane or itsscore which it is quite the same.Enjoy!.
After fighting several thoughts to walk out on this film I managed to stay until the end,Although it wasn't worth it.What's not bad to say about this, everything is cliché When writing a horror film shouldn't you consider every other horror film of the recent years,This one didn't.You see everything coming.Its not scary,its dumb This Japanese horror film style is dead...It got old quick and this one should be the last.Everything in this film is all to convenient.Finding Spirit photo magazines with the cryptic medium....its goes on an on Horror films are like any other film.They need good stories and strong interesting characters that develop.Many horror films go off their story and simply start trying to scare the audience,almost forgetting the plot lines completely.Thus the film completely falls apart.Horror films need originality badly.
If you go into this version with an open mind, even after seeing the original, then you should still quite enjoy it.This one sticks pretty close to the original in storyline as well, which is a good thing because with it being a remake you sometimes kind of expect them to change things around, and end up ruining it but they don't.
The ironic thing is with that though, is if you've seen the original then you know what to expect at the end so it kind of takes that surprise element away slightly.Anyway, this one felt like it was a bit slower for the first half of the movie that what the original did, but thankfully it picks up enough within the last 30 minutes or so to make up for that.
Shutter is a rather different remake than the usual Japanese to American horror, it has a pace which is just cracking, it's speeds along very fast but smoothly, one thing I dislike is when a film takes too long to get going and it lags but this movie doesn't waste any time in telling the story.
American remakes of Asian film can either be really good or really bad, this is a good one, in lots of ways, the first being the excellent central performance by Rachael Taylor, Australia's newest up and comer.
This film was made a few years and it was before I knew anything about Rachael Taylor but recently I have seen her in quite a bit of stuff and I have to say she has a great screen presence, she is wonderful in Shutter and pretty much everything else she's in.Josh Jackson is pretty standard as the boyfriend with a bit of a secret, I mean his role could have been played by anyone but yeah he's also pretty good.
I am a huge fan of horror movies, believe me I have watched masses, and trust me that this film is not as bad as people claim it to be.
No scares, no jumps, no gripping intrigue or suspense.There is a twist at the end, but it's 'too little too late', by this point i was only watching because i hadn't managed to find a rusty fork to stick in my eyeballs.Don't waste your time on this film, juggling 'rio snappers' would be more frightening..
Thought the two lead characters were very good, especially Rachael think she's stunning but for some reason when they make the American remakes they take that edge off, the little jumps, unexpected scenes and the effectiveness of the main 'scary' character.
...very.American couple moves to Tokyo where they are terrorized by a ghostly Japanese girl who keeps appearing in their photos.I went to see Shutter with absolutely zero expectations and it's probably a good thing I did because I would have likely hated this movie otherwise.
Much like its tailer suggests Shutter is another one of those Japanese supernatural horror films remade for America - very much in vein of The Ring and The Grudge, but not as effectively chilling as either of those movies.
It's basically another formula supernatural horror film that could really use a bigger dose of imagination.But despite all of its predictability, Shutter had a few good points that kept it from being a complete waste.
This reminded me a lot of "One missed call" Okay, here we go.They were both remakes of Japanese horror flicks, they both had Jump moments that don't even seem to phase anyone except a idiots, they both have the same stupid soundtrack that makes you know whats coming and tries(it seems) SO hard to make you feel scared, they both have young attractive women getting scared and you don't feel sorry for them because it has no character development at all, and the list goes on and on and on.Overall, this movie was terrible, do go see it, if you waste your money on this film you will have made a terrible mistake..
From the first dark-room encounter where he finally becomes convinced of the presence of the ghost, the encounter with the ghost in the boardroom which is another stand-out due to the fantastic innovation of the Polaroid camera allowing for some suspense to be had with the waiting for the photo results to come about, and the interaction that happens once the revelation has occurred is really good, and the later attack alone in the apartment with only the flashing camera to provide any light in brief spurts, the sounds of what's going on making it so fun and creepy that works so well due to being quite long and intense, which makes it stand-out a little more than the quick-shot appearances throughout the beginning.
As well, there's an incredibly fun and enjoyable encounter late in the film through an attack at the house, which has a lot of good points about it, from the creepy ghost action to the great setting and what it signifies for what has happened so far, it's a great scene and really makes a great lasting impression.
Storywise this is a decent idea and I'm guessing the original perhaps worked out better, but this is largely overly tame, and for a movie not even 90 mins long it feels very plodding at times, and rather directionless.
I absolutely loved the original Thai horror film, SHUTTER, and I thought that this film might be interesting because of the new setting (Japan) and the presence of a Japanese director to give it some Asian sensibility.
Every major set-piece already happened in SHUTTER, especially the excellent twist ending from that film, so I found this movie bereft of surprise, originality and inspiration.It's well shot, but it feels hollow.
This is a richer cousin of films like "One Missed Call", where Hollywood remakes a successful Asian horror film trying to gather more audiences since there are people in the world who hates reading captions of foreign films, so they film a English version and everybody gets happy (or not which is my case).
Instead of an cell-phone, the ghosts come out of photographs in bizarre moments; spirits ruining the photos taken by Joshua Jackson while enjoying honeymoon with his wife (Rachael Taylor), and also taking photos (that will be ruined too!) for his work making a great advertisement for a big company.Their problem started after accidentally run over a girl in the woods, and it looks like the girl's spirit is chasing them and killing some of their friends.
But the plot twist at the ending, reminding of "Ghost Story" (1981) was amazing, lift up the movie a little bit, but not enough to make a good film.
Fans of the genre should probably give it a look but then again, anyone who has seen more than a few of such films really won't be surprised by how things unravel here.For this spooky adventure we follow photographer Benjamin Shaw (Joshua Jackson) and newlywed wife Jane Shaw (Rachael Taylor) as they travel to Japan for business on account of Ben's new job.
Director Masayuki Ochiai does well to try and cover up much of this detective-mystery tangent in order to conceal, and in turn develop some tension, yet the scripts insistence on giving reasoning too often overwhelms its insistence on telling an interesting, scary story.Main characters Ben and Jane are your typical horror movie newlyweds; both are madly in love, and as such their gradual loss of reality soon contrasts with their early airy nature.
Remaking Japanese horror movies seems to be the latest film-making trend these days and "Shutter" is no exception to the rule.
Very cliché stuff going on here, it's like the director hasn't seen a horror movie for 20 years.That being said, it does start to pick up near the end.
As Shutter started out, I found it to be pretty predictable, but as it went on me and my friend (who at any other movie would most likely be pointing out some horrible mistake made by the directors)found ourselves wrapped up in the plot.
While the movie itself isn't as "scary" as a few people have made it out to be, it still has its intense moments.And while the ending wasn't as surprising as I had hoped (after being won over by the second half of the film), this movie definitely earns a B+ in my book.I recommend you buy this when in comes out on DVD, or at least rent it and see it a few times.Hopefully, you won't be disappointed again in our culture and our never-ending talent for ripping good movies to shreds..
The ghost just don't happen to be evil and try to kill others like some other scary films, there are good reason behind it.
This remake is, however, very well done.All I can say is that this film is recommended for all you Ghost stories fans who enjoy Hollywood more than Japanese cinema, or for you truly devout Horror freaks who'd like to compare this to the original.
As a remake of the original 2004 Thai horror film, newlywed Ben and Jane Shaw have traveled to Tokyo, where photographer Ben is investigating a potentially lucrative job opportunity.
Well, the idea of me liking this movie isn't a bit improbable, because I always seem to never loathe the new surge of Asian horror remakes that have been coming out the last few years.
Overall, if you usually enjoy these PG-13 Asian horror remakes, movies like THE RING and THE GRUDGE, there's no doubt that you'll enjoy this too.
Shutter is another disappointing horror remake from director Masayuki Ochiai who does a decent job with this film but the lack of real scares, suspense, and an original ghost is what weighed down the film the most.
This film was really lacking inventive scares, suspense, and a scary villain who seemed to be just a rip off all the other vengeful woman ghosts who can be found in many other horror movies out there.
There was a little suspense but no real scares fortunately they kept this movie to a trim 85 minutes but after watching it you still feel like that was a total waste of time.
"Shutter" is a remake of a Thai horror film that concerns a couple who start seeing the ghostly image of a young woman.
Though this movie was from a Thai original, it chooses Japan as its setting and, even more than The Grudge, becomes pretty much a Japanese horror movie with Americans.
this movie was mostly boring,with no real scares.plus this genre(remakes of Japanese movies)is getting to be old hat,at least in my mind.i also didn't think the actors put forth a lot of effort.i will admit the ending was a bit creepy,but a horror movie with a creepy ending,does not a complete horror movie make.the rest of the movie was lifeless and bland.having interesting characters with more than one dimension always helps.too bad this movie didn't have them.the storyline isn't too deep,either.i won't say this is the most boring movie i have ever seen,or the worst.it's just that it does nothing to distinguish itself from the rest of the pack.for me,Shutter is a 4/10.
Well, that scene is repeated nearly verbatim here, and amusingly, it doesn't even make sense, as he comes across his wife and it instantly switches gears (and in a second viewing of the scene, I realized they were trying to scare you by putting the ghost girl in different places, but they're laughably inept at even this, not leaving the exposures long enough to even get the effect of the scene).The original Shutter is a Thai film (you can tell by how long the crew's names are), and that far-less-reviled production is set in Bangkok, which would have, if nothing else, at least provided a new and unique locale for this type of film, but the producers of this American remake were stringent in their desire for it to be as formulaic as possible, so not only did they transfer the film to Tokyo, they decided against hiring the original director, choosing to go with a *JAPANESE* J-horror hack.
Well, I didn't see the original and I don't intend to but I enjoyed this movie remake or not.It takes a lot to send a shudder down my spine but there were some genuine scares in this film.
However, the biggest problem I had with this film was that it was difficult to feel much towards the main two characters.Now there is a good reason for this, and I won't spoil things for those who haven't seen the film, but I'll just say there was probably a better way to handle the situation Now on to the spoiler, so stop here if you don't want to know something that happens towards the end.
The only thing fans of the original got right is how dismally bad the remake is.Shutter (2004) would have been a lot of fun in the 1980s, and I can understand why kids and people new to the genre like it so much, but there's not much here for those more experienced in the genre -- Asian horror, or horror in general.
So far the Ring is still the best Asian horror remake so far (can't go terribly wrong when given to Gore Verbinsky).But overall this movie i wouldn't say its bad but just a pass if you have nothing to watch.