Synopsis
A newly married couple discovers disturbing, ghostly images in photographs they develop after a tragic accident. Fearing the manifestations may be connected, they investigate and learn that some mysteries are better left unsolved.
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Cast
- Joshua JacksonBenjamin Shaw
- Rachael TaylorJane Shaw
- Megumi OkinaMegumi Tanaka
- David DenmanBruno
- Eri OtoguroYoko
- John HensleyAdam
- Maya HazenSeiko
- James KysonRitsuo
- Yoshiko MiyazakiAkiko
- Kei YamamotoMurase
Recommendations
- 75
TV Guide Magazine
Surprisingly effective supernatural tale in which there's more to fear from the living than the dead. - 63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Shutter has the look and feel of a proper J-horror film. Tokyo is seen as a series of gloomy gun metal skies. And the acting is more subdued than in Hollywood horror movies. - 50
Boston Globe
If Shutter is any indication, the reputation of professional photographers is still on the wane. Not only are photographs creepy, the film suggests, but so are photographers. - 42
The A.V. Club
The photography hook gives Shutter the potential to be a genuinely creepy ghosts-in-the-machine story like the original "Pulse," or better still, a horror twist on "Blowup." But one effective scene lit solely by a camera flash isn't enough to rescue this from the J-horror slushpile. - 40
The Hollywood Reporter
Genuine scares are few and far between, and the climactic explanation for the ghost's appearances comes as something less than a revelation. - 40
Variety
A blandly cast and crafted remake of the same-titled 2004 Thai pic that itself emulated J-horror norms, which seemed a lot fresher back then. - 40
The New York Times
The director, Masayuki Ochiai, conjures textbook J-horror miasma: clammy clinical interiors; overcast skies; diffuse cityscapes. He also gives Alfred Hitchcock a nod, with a sequence nakedly stolen from “Psycho,” and draws unease from Jane’s disorientation in a foreign city. Tokyo, in fact, may be the movie’s most fascinating player. - 38
San Francisco Chronicle
Fans of J-horror (for Japan, where the genre was born; its conventions have since spread to South Korea and Thailand) will find Shutter familiar; others may just doze.
