Shutter is a prime example of Hollywood horror spinning its wheels. Since the success of The Ring back in 2002, it seems that we're guaranteed at least one or two American remakes of Asian genre films per year. After enduring the mediocrity that was One Missed Call earlier this year, I can't honestly tell you I was looking forward to this one. This rang especially true simply because this is yet another PG-13 flick that uses technology as the main crutch for its supernatural villains. This time it's cellular phones, an idea that, as far as I'm concerned, it just isn't possible to squeeze much suspense from.

Photographer Ben (Joshua Jackson, who was once on "Dawson's Creek", a reasoning one of my female friends offered up for wanting to see this) and his new bride Jane (Rachael Taylor) find themselves heading to Japan for their honeymoon. On the way they end up hitting a girl standing in the middle of the road and crash their car down a ditch. However, when they come to, she's nowhere to be seen and they have no evidence of her ever actually being there.

Not long afterwards Ben finds himself getting a big gig photographing models that includes fancy living quarters and a hefty wage. Our couple moves into their new digs, Ben goes to work, and Jane begins encountering all sorts of odd things, mostly involving photographs that are smudged with a sort of ghostly image. As expected, people don't believe her at first but once they start experiencing the phenomenon for themselves, and once people around Ben start to die or go crazy, they have no other choice.

And here's where Luke Dawson's script begins treading over familiar J-horror inspired plot threads as a dull mystery pops-up involving a wrongful death and the settling of restless spirits that will help put an end to it all. It's a pretty uninspiring tale that they've decided to pepper in a handful of silly scare moments such as when Ben gets photo chemicals in his eyes or a moment where a spectre reaches through a camera lens and plucks out a photographer's eye. It's the typical watered-down supernatural thrills you'd expect from this hybrid American/Japanese flick and when you're not busy yawning, you'll be having a hard time getting much of anything from this.

Like both of the North American Grudge movies, the makers of Shutter have recruited an Asian director (Masayuki Ochaiai) to attempt to give it the flavour of its source material. However, unlike the aforementioned flicks, they hired someone who has nothing to do with the source material. Ochaiai does have genre experience as he made Kansen (Infection) and Parasite Eve and he's done his best to bring the feel of J-horror to the American teenage masses. If anything, Shutter does hit all the right notes regarding the mood and make-up of this type of movie, so I can't really blame him for how things turn out. I also have a hard time blaming the leads, who do their best with material that just doesn't feel like it can even fill-out the film's shorter running time - I think even the end twist might've worked a lot better if everything wasn't drawn so thin to begin with.

In case you're keeping track, Shutter is the third Asian horror remake (the original was made in Taiwan in 2004) to hit theatres so far in 2008. It follows in the footsteps of One Missed Call and The Eye, is unable to even illicit a mild thrill from this seasoned horror veteran, and just gives me more fodder to point at when I tell you all about how American studios should be producing more original ideas rather than recycling a trend that seems to be (hopefully) running out of steam. (Chris Hartley, 8/17/08)

Directed By: Masayuki Ochiai.
Written By: Luke Dawson.

Starring: Joshua Jackson, Rachael Taylor, Megumi Okina, David Denman.