Shutter

Yessiree, bub. It's another A-horror hoke-fest! It's only three months into the new year, and we've already stomped on the Godzilla-inspired Cloverfield, didn't pick up that One Missed Call, and nobody wanted to see The Eye remake even with the built-in Alba allure. Now we've got Shutter, a reprint of a photo-centric Thai horror film from just a few years ago, duplicated by a Japanese director with an American and Pacific Rim cast. Talk about a travelogue of terror!

When a newly-wed, impossibly pretty and vibrantly youthful couple — professional shutterbug Ben (Joshua Jackson) and his muse Jane (Rachel Taylor) — are driving to their honeymoon cabin near Mt. Fuji, the should-be sexy getaway is marred by a tragic accident in which she runs over a girl and crashes their car into a tree. They should have been registered at Eastwood Insurance. At any rate, no one's worse for wear, and even when the cops come to the scene they chalk it up to a road-fatigue induced delusion, because they find no evidence of a girl, let alone anything having been run over.

Of course, this is not the last of our black-haired, seemingly soulless succubus. Ben and Rachel flee to Tokyo partially for a big-city, big-bucks fashion shoot, but mainly for refuge from the creepy creature that refuses to leave them in peace. Unfortunately for them, the sneaky spirit's got frequent flyer miles and a good map of the city.

While Shutter does suffer from several significant logic-lapses and is cluttered with clichés, I can't actually say I hated it. The cinematography is lush and gorgeous, making for a welcome respite from Cloverfield's psychotic shaky-cam; it doesn't have the dour ick-factor of One Missed Call; and it was better-acted and more entertaining than The Eye. In addition, there are some elaborate set-pieces — one I liked in particular, lifted nicely from the original, is a scene in which rapid camera flashes create a nail-biting atmosphere of disorientation and startling menace.

Jackson and Taylor do a bang-up job of making their onscreen dynamic believable (until the kooky conclusion, that is), and the parts played by Heroes' James Kyson Lee and Nip/Tuck's John Hensley are only bits, but it's good to see Lee in a different light and is always a pleasure to witness Hensley's effortless scene-steals.

As I mentioned, the conclusion is crazy — think: What Lies Beneath crossed with Fatal Attraction, then juxtaposed with The Grudge and just a touch of Stendhal Syndrome… all with an IQ tilt down to the WB audience — but if you're willing to let yourself get sucked into the silliness, you might just want to flip through this photo album of fear when it comes out on DVD.

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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson

Check out Horror.com's exclusive on-camera interviews with Rachel Taylor and Joshua Jackson here