Customer Reviews

Shutter (Widescreen Unrated Edition)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(17)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Ok, I hesitated buying this movie because of the reviews here and from what I had heard. I own the original Thai release of this movie and love it. I decided to buy this movie and I'm not sorry that I did. It is not that bad. The photography was good, the effects were good, the actors were good...the story is not original, it is borrowed...but then again so are most the stories out there. I liked the twist on the ending that this one had. Give this movie a chance and don't listen to horror movie snobs who probably only give a 5-star if peoples limbs are hanging on by a thread and there are buckets of blood and guts. If you want a good movie about a ghost haunting someone that did them wrong, then you won't be sorry with this movie.

I wanted to buy this movie, so I figured I would check out some reviews here on Amazon.

After reading said reviews, I was somewhat discouraged and thought renting might be a better idea. Since I knew I would at least enjoy the location shots in Japan, renting wouldn't be a waste.

Well, I was pleasantly surprised! I really enjoyed this movie. It may well have some minor plot flaws, but what movie doesn't? All in all, I found it intriguing and pretty well-paced. To me it was as much a mystery as a horror flick. Having both those elements is what maintained my interest.

I've never seen the original Thai movie; however, now I intend to buy both versions. Even my husband and daughter liked it!

Maybe this movie isn't one everyone enjoyed, but sometimes it's a good idea to check it out for yourself.

Shutter (Masayuki Ochiai, 2008)

You know, it's funny reading IMDB commentary on remakes of Asian horror films; it often seems like half the commenters are unaware the movie is a remake, and the other half are attacking the movie for things that are identical to the original film and talking about how bad they're messed up in the remake. It makes you wonder if anyone has seen either version. Well, I have. Both of them, in fact. And for an American remake, Shutter is actually not awful. Like most American remakes of Asian horror films, however, it is entirely unnecessary.

Ochiai, whose last film was the highly underrated Infection, comes eastward to direct this remake of the 2004 Thai film of the same name. In this version, which is relatively faithful to the original, a photographer named Ben Shaw (Fringe's Joshua Jackson) and his new wife (Transformers' Rachael Taylor) go back to Ben's old stomping grounds in Tokyo for Ben to take a photography assignment. On the way to the cabin where they're going to spend their honeymoon, Jane sees a woman in the middle of the road and hits her. When the police come, however, they can find no trace of her. Soon she starts turning up in every photograph the two of them take, and Jane realizes she has to figure out who the woman is and why she's stalking them before things turn fatal.

Ochiai is a very competent director, as Infection showed, and unlike many imported directors, being in Hollywood seems to have done nothing to suppress his abilities; Shutter is a well-executed movie in almost every regard. (There will be some scenes that people who have seen the original will understand better than people who didn't; the movie's shorter running time is to blame, given that otherwise the film is almost slavishly faithful, save a change of location and a change in the ethnicity of the main characters.) The only problem? Trying to figure out why Roy Lee, the entrepreneur behind at least a quarter of the remakes (both Asian and non-) to come out of Hollywood in the seven years since the Ring remake, persists in not understanding that simply releasing the Asian films theatrically in America will make him just as much money. Probably more, given that in most cases, the original films are far better than the remakes. (And yet when we do get foreign horror films theatrically released in America, we get such overrated and undertalented crap as Haute Tension, one of the worst movies of the past decade, and Darkness.) Sure, there's the small subset of the moviegoing populace who won't sit still for subtitles. (That's why there were so many dubbed films in the seventies; really, you could release it both ways, given how many movies play on multiple screens in the same theatre these days, and let the customer choose.) But just skimming the reviews for these movies, and reading what people have to say about them on message boards all over the Internet, should be telegraphing to Roy Lee and his compatriots that most of us would much rather have a chance to see the originals on the big screen. And really, are you going to tell me the twenty-five mil Shutter made in America during its theatrical run even came close to covering production costs?

Please, sir, just give us the originals. I bet you'd make a lot more money that way, and really, isn't that what you're all about? Masayuki Ochiai could have been working on another movie all this time, and it would probably have been better. **

The string of PG-13 rated Japanese horror remakes seem to be dwindling with each passing year, with Shutter (along with The Eye) being one of the more recent. Joshua Jackson (Dawson's Creek) and Rachael Taylor (Transformers) star as a newlywed couple in Tokyo who become haunted by the vengeful spirit of a woman that has been quite wronged. What little that Shutter offers in the way of twists and turns end up being rather predictable instead, as do any attempt to achieve anything that could be possibly considered scary or even remotely creepy. By this time, we've seen it all, and seen it all done much better as well (and as much as I despise many of these remakes, nearly all the originals they are based on are more than worth seeing themselves). Jackson and Taylor do the best they can with what they have, which isn't much in the least either. All in all, Shutter is just plain bad no matter how you look at it, and by all means is to be avoided.

Some spoilers ahead.....





Okay, the plot is simple enough. A newlywed couple go from the U.S. to Japan for the guy's photography assignment, apparently run over a woman who then cannot be found, start working, get haunted, freak out a lot, and then the wife finally discovers, after they are back home, that the girl haunting her hubby and killing off his friends was actually the victim of sexual attacks and blackmail by said men. The wife wisely leaves him, and the man pretty much lobotomizes himself, still unable to get rid of the vengeful ghost.
Yeah, so? How is this any different from the other pale remakes of much scarier and more subtle Japanese originals? I don't remember being scared at all by this one. Not once. I did, however, find my mind wandering several times.

When it was in theaters I was considering on seeing it, but didn't get a chance...then I was at my friend's house last night felt like watching a scary movie so we bought it on demand & ended up being a total waste it was barely scary & terrible ending nd the plot wasn't really thought out at all...basically DON'T SEE IT OR BUY IT

First off, let me say that I love horror films and remakes as such, but this has to be one of the most horrific movies I have viewed recently (ironic, isn't it). The plot is uninteresting, there's too much of a gap between the "scary" scenes (which aren't even scary, just laughable), the casting is poor, the acting is below average, and that's just to say a few things. I'm glad that I got this as a free rental because I wouldn't have wanted to waste any money on this. It's bad enough that I wasted an hour and a half of my time watching this garbage. I kept waiting for something to happen and it never did. I wouldn't recommend this under any circumstances. They ought to be ashamed of themselves creating this because The Ring was a fantastic movie and The Grudge was a decent movie. If you want to see a movie of this type that's done well, try The Eye with Jessica Alba. I was interested the entire time and the characters were believable.

I liked "THE RING" the rest of the japanese remakes next to this one don't compare.
Personally I thought this story was unique, even though there were some parts of the movie that weren't original.
Over all I liked it better than the "The Grudge" or "The Eye".
This movie will not change my oponion about Sushi!!LOL
I rate this movie a 5 of 5 stars!!

Shutter is a generic Japanese horror flick. Nothing too special about it or stand out. It's pretty basic and somewhat predictable. The story does flip around on you so it's not so run of the mill, but I don't know what turned me off so much about this movie. It had the potential to be great, but I think the combination of the casting roles, the story balance made this picture a flop. Not to mention that there are so many "Grudge" & "Ring" ripoff movies out that this one kind of just blends in with the rest of them. I'm a big horror fan and I've seen may films from box office smashers to low budget crashers. Shutter is honestly just a copycat movie made to cash in on the dying Japanese/US horror fad. Btw that whole weight thing and always behing together was poor attempt to bring shock value to this vauge movie.

I don't see how any hardcore horror fan could NOT have seen every plot point coming.

This may contain spoilers, but not really, since it's all predictable.

SHUTTER begins with a young couple running over a woman. I assumed right off that bat that the car victim was a ghost. Minutes later, they can't find the body. At this point, EVERY VIEWER should KNOW for certain that it was a ghost.

Yet the film spends about an hour, with "spooky" happenings while the wife investigates, before we "learn" that -- the car victim was already dead! -- she must have been a ghost!!!

It was also obvious to me, way early one, that the ghost had met with foul play -- at the hands of hubby and his friends. And sure enough, the final "twist" is that the wife learns that hubby helped rape the woman and drove her to suicide.

What made THE RING remake so great was that it turned such ghost conventions on its head. Normally, the ghost stops haunting once mortals discover its body or learns its secrets. That didn't happen in THE RING.

But SHUTTER is no RING. SHUTTER does have some nice (albeit stylistically derivative of THE GRUDGE) cinematography. It's a competent film, so I'm giving it two stars.

Even so, the film is so unoriginal, with such uninteresting characters (not likable or unlikable, just uninteresting), that my mind kept wandering.