- Release Date: July 15th, 2008
- Genre: Horror/Suspense
- Price: $17.99 on Amazon
- Run Time: 90 Minutes
- Rated: Unrated (PG-13 in theaters)
- Publisher: 20th Century Fox
- Starring: Joshua Jackson, Rachael Taylor, David Denman, James Kyson Lee, Maya Hazen
- Similar To: Every other horror movie
If you read my recent review of Asylum you probably already know that I am not a huge horror fan. So you should already know that the chances of me liking Shutter were already pretty slim. As it turns out I thought Shutter was below average mostly due to not being original at all.
Shutter tells the tale of Ben and his new wife Jane. Ben gets a new job in Japan as a photographer. Their honeymoon is going smoothly until they end up running into a woman while driving on a mountain road. When they wake up the girl is gone. Thinking that they were just dreaming they go on with their lives and Sam begins his photographer job. Strange things start occurring when strange shapes show up on Ben’s pictures. They both start to worry that it is the spirit of the woman they ran into and that the spirit is trying to get revenge on them for running her over.
As I have already mentioned, Shutter is far from an original movie. Most horror movies aren’t very original in my opinion and Shutter is no different. The movie doesn’t really try anything new. It is actually even a remake of a Japanese movie. Being unoriginal also leads it to being predictable to a point.
As far as the unrated rating is concerned this is one of those prime examples where things were just added to the movie in order to get an unrated rating and be able to sell more copies. The movie was actually PG-13 to begin with so you can tell that only a scene or two were added in order to get the unrated label. I personally hate when movies do this especially since the scenes that are added are usually totally pointless and end up hurting the movie.
As far as acting or visuals are concerned neither are anything special. Acting in horror movies is generally not that great in the first place so it isn’t that surprising that the acting in this movie isn’t very good either. TV fans have a former and a current TV star to watch for though; Joshua Jackson (Pacey from Dawson’s Creek) and James Kyson Lee (Ando from Heroes). Both were/are better in their TV roles than this film.
I have been pretty critical of the movie so far. As you can tell I personally didn’t think the movie was very good. I am also not a big fan of horror movies though. Shutter is an average horror movie so horror fans should get a lot more enjoyment out of the movie than I did.
My Rating: 
Horror Fans: 
