Directed by Masayuki Ochiai. Starring Joshua Jackson, Rachael Taylor, David Denman, James Kyson Lee, John Hensley 16 cert, gen release, 85 min **
OH, MAKE it stop! Please make it stop!
The heroes of this latest adaptation of an Asian horror film see a ghostly figure with black hair everywhere they look. I know how they feel. Blameless western filmgoers first caught sight of this particular apparition about a decade ago, when the original Japanese, Korean and Thai pictures began creeping into our cinemas. Then the American remakes began. Last year, with the release of Shrooms, a hairy spook-person even made it into an Irish film. She (sometimes he) is now as ubiquitous as Jude Law. If only he (sometimes she) had quite such a terrifying effect as that actor.
Shutter begins with a recently married couple (Joshua Jackson and Rachael Taylor) making their way to Japan for a combined honeymoon and business trip.
Once in Tokyo, Benjamin, a photographer, begins working for a pretentious fashion firm while Jane, a loose end, ambles bemusedly about the bustling streets.
Sound familiar? Those scenes which echo Lost in Translationare, in fact, carried off quite effectively. The sense of eerie isolation induced by the unfamiliar surroundings is conveyed more convincingly than the coming supernatural terrors.
Jane and Benjamin have, you see, recently had an encounter with, yes, a ghostly black-haired figure in a white dress. After apparently running over the spectre, they begin to discern traces of her in the corners of Ben's photographs. Then terrible things begin happening to his friends and colleagues. You know how it goes.
Shutteris, to be fair, far from the worst in its increasingly tiresome genre. The leads are admittedly pretty useless, but the shots of Tokyo are bewitching and the picture ends with an imaginatively unsettling image that hangs around in the brain long after the credits have rolled. That noted, it really is time to leave these particular tropes alone for a spell.
DONALD CLARKE
