Shutter (Unrated Edition) DVD Review

Posted by Jeremy Thomas on 07.21.2008

Joshua Jackson needs a much better agent

Directed by: Masayuki Ochiai
Written by: Luke Dawson

Starring:
Joshua Jackson - Benjamin Shaw
Rachael Taylor - Jane Shaw
Megumi Okina - Megumi Tanaka
David Denman - Bruno
John Hensley - Adam
Maya Hazen - Seiko
James Kyson Lee - Ritsuo
Yoshiko Miyazaki - Akiko
Kei Yamamoto - Murase

Domestic Gross: $25,928,550
Worldwide Gross: $44,403,302

DVD Release Date: 7/15/2008
Running Time: 87 minutes



Original Theatrical Presentation rated PG-13 for terror, disturbing images, sexual content and language

It’s hard to believe that Joshua Jackson was, at one time, one of the hottest new commodities in Hollywood. The thirty-year-old actor first found his break as Charlie, the main character that was not Emilio Estevez in The Mighty Ducks and its two sequels. From that, he moved on to score his biggest role to date, that of playing Pacey Witter in the five-year series that helped launch the fledgling WB network. Pacey—and by proxy, Jackson—was one of the most popular presences on the show, and when it ended in 2003, he seemed poised to move onto big things. What Hollywood failed to realize is that over the course of the show’s run, he’d been in several films, almost all of which failed to make any impact…with the exception of Scream 2, which wasn’t sold on his name. Apt Pupil, Urban Legend, Gossip, The Skulls…each of these films failed both critically and at the box office, and when Jackson came up on the other side of Dawson’s Creek, he found that the shores were pretty dry. He starred in the failed Wes Craven werewolf film Cursed alongside Christina Ricci, then went to independent and direct-to-DVD features. Following a role in the critically lauded Bobby, directed by his Mighty Ducks co-star Estevez, he moved onto the infinitely-delayed Stuart Townsend-directed Battle in Seattle. While that film has yet to see the light of day (and finally will in a limited capacity in September), his next film, Shutter, did. A remake of the 2004 Thai horror film of the same name, it was directed by J-Horror director Masayuki Ochiai and released in March of this year. Like many of Jackson’s films—and many recent Asian horror remakes—it was critically lambasted, but it managed to make a profit before exiting theaters. Pursuant to this, 20th Century Fox has given it an Unrated Edition on DVD, perhaps hoping to drag in people who had no desire to see another PG-13 J-Horror-esque remake.

The Movie

The film opens on the wedding day of photographer Ben (Jackson) and English teacher Jane (Taylor). Immediately after, they leave on their honeymoon to Japan, where they’re temporarily relocating to due to a job Ben’s obtained. Ben, who’s lived in Japan before, takes Jane around a bit before they make their way to a cabin for the restful part of the honeymoon. This is not to be, however, as on the way, Jane slams their car into a woman who appears suddenly in the road one night, then skid and spin before a forced stop via a tree. When they come to, there’s no sign of the woman, and despite assurances by Ben that there couldn’t have been one, Jane is unconvinced. After they chill in the cabin for a couple days, they head to Tokyo so Ben can do his photo shoot. Rachel seems okay, until she starts noticing that pictures they took at the cabin have a white light distorting it, and Ben finds some of his photos he’s taking have the same thing. Other strange things start to happen, and Rachel finds out through Ben’s assistant Seiko (Hazen) and her ex-boyfriend Ritsuo (Lee) about spirit photography, a phenomenon where spirits and ghosts show up in photographs. She becomes convinced that the girl they hit is haunting them, and sets out to learn more. Along the way, some dark secrets come to light, and she finds to her horror that her answers are not the ones she was hoping for—or even fearing.

Immediately, Shutter starts to seem derivative of previous J-horror films, particularly The Grudge. The similarities are hard to deny; a young woman travels to Japan along with her significant other, has problems blending into the culture, and has run-ins with a onryō (the official term for the vengeance ghosts, who are traditionally long, dark-haired woman in white clothes). While some of these choices are simply faithful recreations of the original Thai film, it doesn’t do the movie any favors at all in terms of originality in comparison with The Grudge—or The Ring, for that matter, or even One Missed Call. The problem isn’t necessarily with the film on its own—the problem is that, as moviegoers, we’ve seen this film too many times before, and it allows us to know exactly what’s going on. We’ve seen enough of these films to know that Megumi, as we learn her name is, is a vengeance ghost just like Kayako from The Grudge and Samara (or, if you prefer the Japanese version, Sadako) from The Ring is, and we know the kinds of tricks she’s going to pull. Hell, some of the tricks are lifted directly from the other films, like a stunt in a dark room that’s straight out of The Grudge 2. While this may spook someone who hasn’t watched a horror movie in the last eight years, the rest of us can see it coming a mile away, and that foreknowledge makes the film a lot less frightening.

Unfortunately, that’s not all that’s wrong with the film. Director Masayuki Ochiai is certainly handicapped by a horrifically weak script coming from Luke Dawson. The script offers an intensely shallow version of the original, far more frightening film, and in turning the terrorized couple into an American couple honeymooning (the original are locals), some plot twists that are needed to bring them into the story seem awfully contrived. The scares are shallow and mean very little, being jump-worthy at their best and boring at their worst. Credit must be given for maintaining the original ending, the one point that is distinctly original about the movie, as well as the certain, seemingly minor plot point that is tied in with it. Unfortunately, in terms of the script, that’s about all this movie has going for it. Plot points are hinted at but not followed up on, as Jane sees things that could make her doubt Ben’s fidelity, but other the suspicions are never even discussed, much less realized. At eighty-seven minutes, one would thing they could have spent another few minutes to have a talk over this at least. For his part, Ochiai does not show his best work in this, his American directorial effort. Ochiai has proven himself talented with horror in Japan, having directed the genuinely chilling Kansen, but here he seems stifled under the Hollywood studio system, and resorts to just making a run-of-the-mill Asian horror remake. One hopes that we’ll see better from Ochiai should he get another shot to make something American—otherwise, he would be best suited to remaining in the market he had started to build a name in, in Japan.

Sometimes, a weak script and poor directing can be elevated by great acting. In Shutter, unfortunately, this isn’t the case. This isn’t to say that Jackson and Taylor are terribly bad—they’re certainly better then Shannyn Sossamon’s tortuously bland performance in One Missed Call, for example. Jackson is good at playing these kinds of roles, and he’s completely serviceable here, though by no means excellent. He manages to make Ben sympathetic for a time, even as we see, through Jane’s perspective, that things are increasingly not what they appear to be. The problem is that Jackson doesn’t have very much to work with, and is forced to resort to the usual shtick of “be spooked, but assure the wife that everything is fine.” It’s not a bad performance, just one we’ve seen done before many times, and Jackson, who seems to realize that this is the case, seems sort of weary in the role. Taylor, unfortunately, doesn’t fair as well as Jackson. The movie portrays her as the eyes of the audience, and she’s unable to pull together the acting chops to do so. She screams adequately enough and looks nice, but from the moment she comes to in the car accident with a mere opening of her eyes and looking around scared, we know that she’s not exactly a Cate Blanchett when it comes to acting ability. Taylor is simply unable to supply Jane with the sort of credibility in the majority of the film to make us believe her. She does well in the last scene, but by then, it is way, way too late. Some of the supporting cast is good; Megumi Okina is appropriately creepy as the ghost Megumi (yes, she does have the same name as the character), and Maya Hazen projects a bright sort of charm into the role of photo assistant Seiko. A brief role by James Kyson Lee of Heroes fame as Ritsuo is enjoyable.

As things progress further and further into the film, it becomes a somewhat deeper story, and this is perhaps what elevates it above some of the worse entries in the Asian horror remake genre. It’s clear that Jackson, Taylor, and Ochiai were interested in making something good, and they did try…some credit has to go for that. Unfortunately, it’s all too little, too late, and Shutter ends up being wasted potential, a commodity that’s sadly easy to find in Hollywood horror.

Film Rating: 3.5

The Video

The video transfer for Shutter, presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, isn’t particularly good, though some may find it tolerable. While the images are mostly clear and blacks are well-defined—important, being as this is shot largely at night like most horror films—other colors bleed a bit, most notably the reds. There’s a fair amount of aliasing, and the entire length of the film shows a bit of noticeable grain. Fox clearly didn’t put a lot of effort into the transfer, and it shows.

Video Rating: 5.5

The Audio

Luckily, while the video transfer suffers some, the audio track is decently strong. The English track is in 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround, with 2.0 Dolby Spanish and French tracks. While leveling can be a problem, and some of the dialogue is submerged by the fairly trite score, it holds up decently well, and rarely does one have to change the volume in order to get a good experience. I’ve certainly heard better audio tracks in my time, but there’s nothing that stands out as really bad. Subtitle options are English and Spanish.

Audio Rating: 6.5

Special Features

Commentary With production executive Alex Sundell, screenwriter Luke Dawson and actress Rachael Taylor: This commentary track, which thankfully features Sundell and Taylor more than Dawson, is easy to listen to, yet pretty pointless, as they talk about things that are pretty blatantly obvious upon watching the movie regarding the plot, the characters, and such. While it’s certainly not bad (not as bad as the movie’s dialogue, at least!), it covers a lot of things in the other features, which perhaps says something about the film that they couldn’t think of anything else to add. Skippable, unless you did actually enjoy the film.

Inside Look: (1:46) Accessible from the main menu, this is either a full scene or a trailer for the upcoming Alexandre Aja horror film Mirrors, starring Keifer Sutherland and Paula Patton. From what can be seen, which is purely Patton and Cameron Boyce, who plays her son, it’s not exactly going to be a winner.

A Ghost In The Lens: (8:17) This short isn’t quite your standard “making-of” fare, as it features Jackson, producer Roy Lee, Taylor, writer Luke Dawson, and other cast and crew members talking about the nature of the story. They go a bit into the concept of the yūrei, the Japanese ghost (of which the vengeful kind is our white-face, black-haired friend the onryō, and talk about the story itself. Director Ochiai does not interview, due to his unfamiliarity with English, but we do get a great quote from him printed on the screen about the nature of death and how we view it in modern times. Others don’t fare so well; Lee says he wanted to make a movie with no “jump scares,” which is all that there is to be frightened of in the movie. Dawson talks about translating the original Thai film into a film for American audiences, and basically how he had to dumb it down. Jackson does come off remarkably well, though, speaking about J-horror in a more informed, intelligent way. It’s too bad he’s not as bright in his script choices.

Cultural Divide: Shooting in Japan: (9:29) This featurette goes into pretty interesting detail about the difficulty the American cast of shooting in Japan with a Japanese director, and working with the translator. It’s nothing people who are familiar with the American remake of The Grudge haven’t heard before, but they do present some interesting topics for conversation. After the typical stuff about it being a very different world, and the people are so polite, they get to the best part, interviewing the translator who worked between Ochiai and the actors. She talks about how she was essentially part of the collaborative effort, having to communicate terms that don’t have direct translations due to the creative nature of the conversations. It’s nice, interesting stuff, even if it’s not groundbreaking.

The Director: Masayuki Ochiai: (9:33) This is where we get to hear Ochiai’s discussion, translated with subtitles during an interview. Ochiai answers questions quite amiably and intelligently about what attracted him to the film, what the differences between his film and the original are, why the yūrei is so often used, what spirit photography is, and whether he believes in it or not. Ochiai is clearly a bright director, and hopefully, this one won’t be his American career’s death knell.

A Conversation With Luke Dawson: (5:33) This is pretty much what it sounds like, a featurette that has writer Dawson talking about the movie. It’s nice to know what was going through Dawson’s mind about the movie, and so easy to see why it went wrong. Dawson talks about making the film “more accessible” for American audiences, which amounts to dumbing it down, and remarks off-hand that he used the internet to research Japan while he was writing the script. Dawson comes off arrogant and sloppy here, and it explains a lot of the problems of the script.

A History of Spirit Photography: (4:50) This very broad, non-detailed overview of spirit photography is the most serious discussion of the concept on the DVD, and while it’s not particularly detailed, it at least treats the phenomenon with a modicum of respect unlike other featurettes on this (see below).

Create Your Own Phantom Photo: (3:58) This completely pointless documentary is a how-to on faking a spirit photograph with Photoshop. Considering that they had just spent five minutes talking about how spirit photography is real, this kind of shoots that in the foot, and it’s not a particularly interesting short to boot.

The Hunt For the Haunt: Tools And Tips For Ghost Hunting: (2:29) Another stupid short, this one presents all the cliché tips one would expect to see in a movie for ghost hunting—it even tells you to “check the cliché places.” Even more ridiculously, it’s a short film that, after being preceded by an old black-and-white bit and a seventies-esque title card, presents everything in text with a pseudo-spooky background score. If you want your intelligence insulted, this is a great two and a half minutes…otherwise, not so much.

Alternate and Deleted Scenes: (14:20) Like many alternate scenes, these are pretty much pointless scenes that were shot but cut for time. Clearly, these aren’t for scares, as Jane eats a Big Mac, watches TV, and gets directions. Nothing here is really worthwhile and the alternate ending isn’t that alternate, and certainly not anything to write home about. All any of this would have done is make the movie longer without benefit.

Trailers: (2:58) There’s a trailer for the Milo Ventimiglia/Alyssa Milano horror film Pathology and the stupid-looking direct-to-DVD sequel to Joy Ride, called Joy Ride 2: Dead Ahead.

Features Rating: 4.5

The 411: There's very little to like in Shutter, another PG-13 Asian horror remake that does nothing for the careers of those involved or the time spent of those watching it. Hampered by a hideous script by Luke Dawson that offers no scares whatsoever, none of the rest of the cast or crew is able to do anything to make it any better. The Asian horror remake genre really needs to go away at this point, as it's already gone well past the "joke" level of movie-making quality. An iffy video tranfer, average audio transfer and special features that insult the viewer's intelligence don't help at all, and this is one to thoroughly avoid.

Final Score:  3.5   [ Bad ]