Shutter (2008)

A heavy burden. American remakes of Asian horror films have mostly struggled to win grace and favour with horror fans. Shutter is no exception, it has been met with the usual howls of derision, claims of it being pointless, loosing the horror essence of the original and etc. But what for someone like me who hasn’t seen the original? I found Shutter to be much like how I found The Ring, the Naomi Watts starrer from 2002, a very effective chiller with a solid mystery to be unravelled at the core. The ghost is creepy – as are the various photographic links, the scares handled professionally by the makers, and the finale pays off with a startlingly chilling revelation that freaked me out; and I’m a middle aged man! It’s far from perfect, the pace is a bit haphazard, logic goes out the window often, and cast performances are only adequate in the absence of “A” list stars to propel the story onwards. While it’s tough to hang your hat on the two principal players since the emotional empathy hasn’t been earned by them, courtesy of the writing. Yet with no frame of reference to raise expectation levels – or down them as well, this is a safe and sturdy spooker that does its job well enough. 7/10