Married life proves to be less than blissful for the young newlywed couple in “Shutter.” Ghostly images keep appearing in their photographs, and it soon becomes obvious that the ghost is not exactly friendly.
As usual with these types of movies the acting, dialog, and character development all leave something to be desired. Sometimes scary movies don’t need all this to be enjoyable, if they’re actually scary. Unfortunately, the plot of “Shutter” plods along so slowly that I could feel my eyelids drooping several times. My note-taking kept me awake; if I hadn’t been reviewing the movie I would have dozed off for sure.
Besides the storyline puttering along at an alarmingly slow pace, the whole Japanese ghost story idea is becoming so overused that even a well-acted, well-directed movie with this plot would seem dull. One gets the feeling that filmmakers are just hoping to profit off of the trend started some years back by “The Ring” and “The Grudge,” because I’m starting to have a hard time distinguishing one of these Japanese ghost movies from the next.
“Shutter” is not extremely violent or gory, but it does have several biblical profanities, which automatically prevent it from being awarded the Dove “Family-Approved” Seal.
