Winner of the audience award at the Gérardmer Film Festival (2006) and nominated for the Golden Kinnaree Award (Best Film, 2005) at the Bangkok International Film Festival, Co-directors Banjong Pisonthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom have been quoted as saying it was the 1973 riot in Bangkok, where 77 students were killed for protesting against the military that inspired them to make Shutter. They saw several photos which bore peculiar and unidentifiable, possible spectral images, and believed this would make a great premise for a horror film.

COMMENTS
All I can say about this film is "about time". Thailand has sadly been plagued with horror films filled with unoriginality, unintentional lame-ness, and a lot of silly and unnecessary humor. Of course there are a few exceptions -- Nang-Nak, and now Shutter. I really liked this movie; it was an interesting mixture of Hong Kong's The Eye and Japan's Ju-On: The Grudge, but with a twist of realism. That realism is that of the use of actual photos that supposedly show the spirits of passed loved ones, that I guess still stick around even after death. It seems as though Thailand is finally catching up to Japan and South Korea with their countless ghost flicks. Hell, this movie kicks a lot of those unoriginal and predictable South Korean flicks square in the nuts.

The movie follows a young couple as they drive home after a night of boozing with friends. On their way home they hit someone, and instead of seeking aid, they flee. Shortly after, they begin seeing strange things and encounter events that can only be explained as that of the supernatural. The man is a freelance photographer, so his first encounter is from a picture he took recently. It doesn't take the duo long to figure out that a good way of spotting a ghost before it shows itself is to use photography, so armed with a Polaroid camera and little knowledge of the woman they supposedly hit, they set out to dig up the history of the person, in hopes of putting a stop to the haunting.

Like I said above, I really like this movie. Most of the scares aren't the same-old crap that we usually see and they don't try hard to turn it into another Ringu copy-cat. No, the scares are effective and the atmosphere is creepy. Although the events that lead to climax is somewhat predictable, I still enjoyed it as though I didn't know what was going to happen. I only hope that North America doesn't catch wind of this film and decide to remake it. I think it's a movie that'll be best just getting a limited theatrical release and a straight-to-video effort, slipping under the radar and slowly becoming a cult favorite among horror fans. I even liked the DVD it came with, because even the deleted scenes and behind-the-scenes stuff had subtitles, which is very rare when it comes to import DVDs. Actually I think this is the first import DVD I've seen that has subtitles in the bonus stuff.

OVERALL
This is a solid Thai ghost flick that's an interesting mixture of The Eye and Ju-On: The Grudge. Definitely worth a check if you're into Asian horror.

A day or two later and Tun is taking pictures at the school’s graduation ceremony. When he takes the film in to be developed, he’s confused by some white, smoky images that appear on almost all of the pictures, and by what appears to be a spectral face in the background of a shot he took in front of one of the more prominent buildings on campus. At first he thinks that the pictures weren’t developed right but when he finds that these images appear on the negatives as well as the prints, he starts to think that something might up amiss.

As Tun finds more and more unusual instances occuring with his photography, Jane sets out to try and figure out where these images are coming from and why. As the manifestations become stronger, she begins to piece things together bit by bit until she finds out that there’s a lot more to this than Tun is letting on and that the spirit that is haunting them is somehow tied to his not too distant past.

Shutter is very derivative of a few of the more popular Japanese ghost stories that have hauled in the big box office bucks the last few years. As you’re watching the film, it will conjure up memories of Hideo Nakata’s Ring and Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-On: the Grudge. A creepy young Asian woman with long black hair does play a large part in all of the ghastly proceedings, and a few of the scares are lifted from those earlier films. That being said, Shutter manages to carve out its own special little place in and amongst the other multitudinous entries in the genre by being smart enough to be interesting and by making us care enough about the characters to really react when the scares hit.

Directed by Thai filmmakers Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom, the movie has plenty of style and even more atmosphere. They make very nice use of the dark room and studio apartment and are able to conjure up a very effective atmosphere of claustrophobia in a couple of scenes, most notably when the ghost manifests in a school laboratory and, in the horrific highlight of the film, when the spirit wreaks havoc in Tun’s studio shortly after he completes some wedding portraits.

Ananda Everingham and particularly Natthaweeranuch Thongmee do a great job as the male and female leads respectively, and Achita Sikaman is in fine form as the wayward phantom in need of vindication. All three performers are suitably believable and Thongmee specifically does a very good job of portraying the confusion and mixed emotions that her character would be experiencing if one were to go through similar events in real life.

Final Thoughts: While Shutter is at times very reminiscent of both Ju-On and Ring it still manages to serve as a noteworthy entry in the Asian horror universe. While it isn’t the most original film to hit screens lately it is really well made and it does provide a couple of really fun creepy moments...