Shutter Review

This review originally appeared almost exactly two years ago - March 28th, 2005 - and is reproduced here with some comments on the new Tartan DVD release added.

Thai horror flick Shutter is a film that has arrived a couple years too late. Had it been made in the early going of the current Asian horror boom it very likely would have been hailed a minor classic, mentioned in the same breath as Nakata's Ringu and Kurosawa's Kairo. Coming this late in the game, however, it seems that a good number of people have taken a look at the early materials, branded it a derivative knock off, and thought no further about it. Those people are certainly justified in their thinking -- Shutter IS quite derivative, owing a large debt to Nakata in particular, but it also succeeds in taking what is now a rather tired formula and re-injecting it with life, creating a film that is significantly more than the sum of its parts.

Shutter falls neatly into the techno-ghost sub genre. Ringu had its haunted videotape, Kairo its website, Phone and One Missed Call revolved around cell phones and Shutter starts with photography, specifically the much rumored phenomenon of spirit photography in which a ghost or spirit is somehow accidentally captured on film. There are a host of variations on this particular urban legend ranging anywhere from captured auras to angry ghosts to angels captured in shots out of airplane windows and Shutter takes things from the vengeful ghost angle.

Tun is a professional photographer in Bangkok. Late one night, following a spate of heavy drinking at a close friend's bachelor party, Tun and his new girlfriend Jane run down a young woman in the street and crash their car into a street side billboard. Seeing no signs of life from the woman Tun panics and the pair flee the scene without so much as calling for an ambulance. The next day he shoots a roll of film at his sister's graduation only to find upon developing them that the entire roll has been spoiled by a series of strange phenomenon: smears of light, strange shadows, indistinct faces superimposed upon the pictures. Though he initially looks for a physical explanation it soon becomes clear to Tun that he is being haunted.

So, yes, the setup seems vaguely familiar, a fact the film makers seem quite aware of going so far as to give Nakata a nod with a ‘long hair rising out of water' shot inserted into a dream sequence, but the film rises well above the level of the recent spate of cheap J-Horror knock offs. What makes the difference? A few things … first, there's the execution. This may not have had the budget of other recent entries, but they certainly put it to better use with tight editing and more than enough solid jump moments and creepy atmosphere to keep you glued to the screen. Second, the film executes a brilliant reveal at about the half way mark that completely alters your read of the proceedings. This film sets you up to look in one direction only to turn you about midway through, adding a whole new layer of meaning to the story and characters without devaluing what has already come up to that point. And thirdly the film is actually about something. It seems like a strange thing to say given just how cluttered the genre has become but I think this may just be the first film of the type to actually be about something larger than simply making people jump since Kurosawa tackled the isolating power of technology with Kairo. Unpacking the main thrust of the film would spoil the reveal mentioned above but suffice it to say that Shutter has a good bit more depth than most and that deeper thrust leads to one of the most beautifully unsettling closing images I have come across in ages.

Taking a look at the film again a couple years later Shutter has held up remarkably well and proven that it firmly deserves its status as a minor classic. But has it gotten a North American DVD release that reflects this? Sadly, no. Tartan DVD releases seem to fall neatly into two camps. There are the prestige titles that receive the A-list treatment - Oldboy, A Tale of Two Sisters, the Tsukamoto titles, etc - and then there are the lower profile titles rushed to market with questionable transfers and minimal features. This falls into the latter camp. Clearly brought to market now to capitalize on the coming remake - the DVD artwork clearly labels this as being The Original version - the DVD features a very soft transfer taken from a noticably damaged print. Sound options - 2.0, 5.1 and DTS - are excellent, as are the English subtitles, but the transfer is soft to the point of leaving images looking slightly out of focus, taking away dramatically from the power of the cinematography. The features are quite limited, including a two minute cast and crew interview and very brief behind the scenes features that include roughly a minute each showing how a handful of scenes were shot.