"Shutter" Ozla Pictures Rating: 1 star (out of 4)
While Hollywood has continued its trend of remaking Asian horror flicks, much has been lost in translation. The most recent moneymaker, "Shutter," which grossed $10.4 million over the weekend, is only a photocopy of the other hits in this peculiar subgenre.
"Shutter" includes all the expected ingredients: American newlyweds in Japan, something going terribly wrong and yet another pale girl with long black hair who returns from death to take revenge. Rather than a haunted videotape or a meowing voice from a telephone, however, this time it's the phenomenon of glossy spirits appearing on tourist photos.
The Kodak couple - Joshua Jackson ("Dawson's Creek") and Rachel Taylor ("Transformers") - is on its work-honeymoon, which includes a fashion photo shoot and a drive in the picturesque countryside. On their getaway, the two mow down a strange woman in the road and crash, but she is nowhere to be found.
After Jackson refuses to believe there was a victim, the strange figures appear on their snapshots and personal secrets begin to surface.
Despite this being Japanese director Masayuki Ochiai's first English-language film, the characters and sets - despite being filmed in Japan - are too Americanized to evoke a sense of foreign mysticism.
The protagonists' disorientation in Tokyo during these strange events does generate some dark stimulation, but the ghost girl's familiar craft fails to frighten. As she appears continuously as smudges and reflections, the jump-outs are easily predicted. After seeing Samara crawl out of a television set in "The Ring," what more is there to expect?
With enough scares to satisfy a middle-school date and a formulaic color scheme, the film defines mediocrity and blandness. It's an unreasonable remake that robs the audience of the ability to think, fear or even drive to the nearest video store to rent the original 1994 Thai "Shutter," which held more invigorating imagery.
Before Hollywood grabs hold of another Japanese horror cult film and decides to dumb it down to an elementary comprehension level, remold the Asian protagonists into Brooklyn bourgeois and filter any artistic value, some ambitious director should step into the limelight and redefine horror - perhaps Michael Haneke already has with his remake of "Funny Games."
If the moviegoers don't catch on soon, there will be a rising army of pale girls with long black hair haunting the American middle-class through every form of electronic media. If not, then Hollywood has not succeeded in its plan: pushing late winter releases into the mainstream, with little advance notice and an entertainment level of zero.
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