Movie Review: Shutter (2008) Take My Picture...Click, Click, Click..

I had seen the coming attractions for the movie Shutter a few months ago, and was pretty excited when the movie finally hit shelves at my local Blockbuster. I had to wait about a week though after it's release to get hold of a copy, Blockbuster is legendary for having new movies out, and never enough copies to satisfy the masses.

Recently I finally got the chance to watch the movie.

The moment I popped this sucker in, about 20 minutes in, I already knew how it would end.

Shutter has a vibe going on that is almost 100% like The Ring mixed with Gothika. The ending was no surprising twist, in fact it was pretty boring.

Plot:
 
Shutter starts off pretty boring. A new couple (Ben and Jane) is obviously just married, and they are heading to Japan for a honeymoon. On the way, the stupid wife hits someone on the road, due to the fact that she drives and reads maps at the same time. Bravo. Anyhow, the cops come, no body is found... and we move on.
 
After their lame little honeymoon they head to some other house in Japan where they will now live.

Ben is a professional photographer, and right away he is introduced to his new office where he will be doing shoots, and processing his photos. Immediately you are given a sense that Ben is going to cheat ion his wife, due to the way some of the Asian women act around him... and touch him. This however strangely never occurs, and was thrown in to suggest cheating - which pretty much gives away the ending, because early on you are raising an eyebrow at him.

Anyhow, seeing how Ben has a new job as a photographer that takes up a lot of his time, his precious emaciated wife gets to roam about the city seeing how she doesn't have a job, and has nothing better to do. Yah see, when you have too much time on your hands, of course you have to find things to do to kick being bored.

Instead of looking for things to do though, things instead come to her.

She's already interested in a series of photographs that Ben and her took when on their honeymoon. They had some sort of odd light ad blurring in them that ruined the shots. She believes it is the girl that she hit with her car back to get revenge after Ben's coworker tells her that it is a spirit photo.

It seems logical, however it was way too early on for 'that' to be the reason. It was only thrown out there to try and throw you off.

Before long, the couple are both experiencing odd things in photographs, and not too long after that the Asian girl Jane hit with her car, is showing herself to them, either by flashing her face through a window, or sitting propped in a chair with hair covering her face (The Ring girl... ahhhh!).

Soon after Jane decides to start playing detective, by tracking down a place in the city where Ben took a photo shoot and all the photos ended up coming out ruined. She somehow manages to guess that the messed up photos in Ben's shoot was a sign that she should go to the building in the photo!

This is where she learns that Ben knows the Asian ghost they keep seeing. Jane finds a photo of this Asian girl and a few other employees on a wall. Behind the photo a sticker with her husbands name is on it, 'photographed by Ben Shaw'.

Right then and there the mystery had already been solved in my mind. No need to even watch anymore, I may as well just hit fast forward.

Jane confronts him, and he tells a tale of this woman, and how she stalked him for so long after they had dated for a short amount of time. He then says after her father died, she went crazy and began following him everywhere... so he had his two friends tell her to leave Ben alone.. and she does! He never saw her since!!!
 
Man, it was just a crock, the whole line he fed to her, and it sounded that way too.

Now Jane... see Jane run? Run Jane run. She is gullible enough to actually believe his tale.

In the end you discover Jane never hit anyone with a car, that this ghost is after Ben for some reason. I won't give it away, but 20 minutes into the flick, I'm sure you'll figure it out for yourself.

Now with the story aside, how did the movie hold up when it comes to being scary?

Well it did a decent job at having a few frightening moments, but overall if I count them off in my head, I can say that only around 2 parts in the flick actually are what some would consider scary. Other than those 2 parts, the movie overall had a boring pace to it.

Mainly though the deal killer is due to the fact that it's a flick that has been done before, only with a different plot that involves cameras and photos. Had this come out before The Ring and Gothika, Shutter may of had a chance, but because it is so similar to these two movies it failed to deliver that delicious creepy ending that one would expect.

2.5 stars out of 5. Not recommended for children's viewing! Duh.