Honeymoon in Japan turns out to be a horror
Photographs can be creepy. They may not steal your soul, but they can certainly steal your image, preserving a simulacrum of your identity at one particular moment of time. If you're lucky, it's a good moment. If you're unlucky, you're Megumi Tanaka (Megumi Okina), the wan specter who menaces a newlywed couple in "Shutter." The blushing bride is Jane (played by Australian actress Rachael Taylor), the grinning groom is genius photographer Ben (Joshua Jackson of "Dawson's Creek"), and their first of many mistakes is deciding to honeymoon in Japan.
As we know from recent American remakes of "Ringu" (2002's "The Ring") and "Honogurai mizu no soko kara" (2005's "Dark Water"), Japan is a prime exporter of contemporary horror films. So when Jane and Ben accidentally run over a nubile hitchhiker while driving through the Japanese countryside, we aren't especially shocked. Nor are we the least bit flustered by the disappearance of the hitchhiker's body, or by the cameo appearances she begins to make in the couple's vacation snapshots. At first, the dead woman shows up as a milky smudge in the corner of photographs, which, we learn, is the hallmark of "spirit photography." The idea behind this enterprise is that dead people who really, really miss the world get to hang around until they show up in the photographs of their BFF. According to the editor of a Japanese magazine dedicated to spirit photography, the dead are - surprise! - usually trying to tell us something.
Just what Megumi is trying to tell Jane and Ben is the central mystery of "Shutter," and it's not such a bad mystery, after all. Although the basic elements are familiar - a vengeful ghost, attractive 20-somethings, exotic locales - director Masayuki Ochiai and screenwriter Luke Dawson manage to combine the elements in novel and not uninteresting ways. Like "The Ring," with which it shares some production staff, "Shutter" is a remake, this time of a Thai production that is one of the country's highest-grossing films. The original may be Thai, but the remake is identifiably in the style of what we might call J-Horror: moody, stylish, artsy, violent. Like the Tokyo it shows us, the film is perpetually gray and overcast. Rain seems always imminent, even indoors.
As Megumi becomes more violent in her attempts at communication, the initially slow pace of the film quickens and director Ochiai's skill at suspenseful plotting is revealed. Also revealed is just how much of a cad Ben is behind his Leica camera and three-day stubble. Like an art school dropout who's seen "Blow-Up" too many times, Ben wants to be an international playboy, an upscale paparazzo. We're reminded of Giovanni Ribisi's character in "Lost in Translation" (also set in Tokyo, and also featuring a newlywed couple), a fashion photographer obnoxious enough to drive Scarlett Johansson into the arms of Bill Murray. If "Shutter" is any indication, the reputation of professional photographers is still on the wane. Not only are photographs creepy, the film suggests, but so are photographers.
