Shutter (2004) Review with Dustin Goebel

Does this Shutter make you shudder? I’ll see myself out…

Synopsis

After a night out with friends, a photographer named Tun and his girlfriend Jane are driving home when they accidentally hit a woman in the street. Instead of helping her, Tun convinces Jane to run to avoid responsibility. In the days after Tun starts to notice strange artifacts in his photos. They soon realize that this isn’t regular photography, its…G-G-G-Ghost photograph. As the photo ghost continues to haunt them, they try to unravel the mystery behind why she is haunting them. 

Review of Shutter (2004)

This is a pretty ok movie. It’s pretty run of the mill formula of “here’s a paranormal phenomena thats talked about on Discovery channel, lets wrap a movie around it.” It loses points for relying way too much on ghost pikaboo and disorientating fakeouts. I think they would have done better trying to scare the audience with jumpscares, and focused on the drama/mystery more.

The repetition of jump scares and creepy photos throughout the second act are only interrupted by confusing non-sequiter appearances of one of Tun’s friends, Tonn, asking desperately for photographs before his untimely death. It all makes sense in the end, but the pacing and editing were off so it feels like the first half of the movie crashed into a second movie halfway through.

The story behind the ghost is the most compelling part of the movie, and unfortunately they leave most of that until the third act. 

Overall it was an interesting story with pacing issues, but at an hour and thirty minute runtime, it never really outstayed its welcome.

Score

5/10