SHUTTER (2008)
(Review)

Before we get to the main attraction, I feel that going over my review for the original Shutter (contained in the Archive), would better illuminate some of the comments I’ll be making about the English-language redux.
So, if you haven’t yet read it, it’s the first entry in the Iguana’s irregular series, “In The Interests of All Things Recyclable.”
And if you’ve already read it…

Benjamin Shaw (Dawson’s Creek’s Joshua Jackson, soon to be seen on J.J. Abrams’ latest TV salvo, the much anticipated Fringe) and his brand new wife Jane (Transformers’ Rachael Taylor) are honeymooning in Japan, when an apparent accident kicks off the supernatural goings-on of the film, occurrences which springboard from the spectral trappings of the world of spirit photography.
As early as the initial set-up, the remake takes the original’s basic premise, and executes its own alterations in an attempt to improve upon Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom’s effort.

Fortunately, this outing actually improves upon the problematic characters found in the original. Here, the male lead comes across as a far more sympathetic character when it counts, keeping the audience suitably occupied and interested, and perhaps more crucially, the female lead is actually written as a definable entity, as opposed to the plot appendage she seems to be in the original.
Jackson and Taylor also submit serviceable, if not particularly distinguished performances, thus making the proceedings passably engaging.
However, while the choice of making the Jane character a more pro-active force in the narrative reinforces the whole, that improvement seems to remain a largely theoretical victory.


The problem, I feel, still remains that, as with the original, this Shutter’s script (by Luke Dawson) isn’t the tight, tense little animal it should be. And the scares—again, as with its Thai progenitor—aren’t as potent as I’d hoped they would be.
Having said that though—and despite the fact that some of the original’s scares are far more noteworthy than their equivalents here—this is, I believe, the first time where a case can be made to argue that the English-language remake plays better than the Asian horror original.
Yes, it’s still a sometimes stuttering affair, but the characters and central mystery depicted here are more plausible and make more narrative sense than those in the original.
And not only is it better than director Masayuki Ochiai’s previous efforts, Parasaito Ivu (Parasite Eve) and Kansen (Infection), it’s also better than this year’s other Asian horror reduxes, Eric Vallete‘s One Missed Call and David Moreau and Xavier Palud’s The Eye.

Ultimately, Ochiai’s Shutter is an intermittently effective horror film that, perhaps, would have played better for me if I was unfamiliar with the original.
Still, it’s a fairly enjoyable ride, and there are far worse out there (like Vallete’s One Missed Call).
So, give it a (heh) shot, if you’re so inclined.

Parting shot: Reviews of the original Shutter, the English-language remakes of One Missed Call and The Eye, as well as Transformers and Cursed (in which Jackson also appeared), can be found in the Archive.

(Shutter OS courtesy of joblo.com; images courtesy of filmz.ru.)

D-WAR (DRAGON WARS)
(Review)

For a Korean production that’s clearly aiming for wide international distribution, Shim Hyung-Rae’s D-War (Dragon Wars) is certainly an ambitious undertaking; it’s even got the multiple character OS marketing thing going, as well as the short, snappy title for quick and easy recall.
Sadly, the film itself doesn’t deliver on nearly all of the other, more significant levels that it should.

The biggest, most shamed-faced culprit has to be Shim’s script: to call it “scattershot” would be charitable.
The narrative jumps from scene to scene with neither rhyme nor reason, and there are a host of inexplicable developments and decisions that make D-War a simply terrible viewing experience.
And the front-heavy exposition—which takes up the first 20 minutes or so of the film, in an awkward and annoying flashback within a flashback—serves to stop the narrative cold even before it’s had a chance to rev its engine.
There’s talk of good serpents and bad serpents and a 20-year old maiden who is destined to lay down her life so that good will emerge triumphant. There’re also brave warriors and magickal amulets and reincarnation and wisps of the production design spirit of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, rudely summoned and shanghaied for this muddled production.
It’s been awhile since I’ve seen a film like this, whose narrative operates in a complete emotionless vacuum, where all the pretty pixels in the world (more on that later) cannot save a story that so utterly fails to engage the audience, it may just as well be a non-experience.

Even the presence of Robert Forster (Tarantino’s Jackie Brown, Van Sant’s Psycho remake, and briefly, in Lynch’s Mulholland Drive) as Jack, the reincarnation of the elder warrior who fights on the side of good, does nothing to move things into the plus column: Forster’s not really given much to do beyond narrating that 20 minute block at the head of the film, and not very well, I might add. He also morphs in and out of the proceedings on a bizarrely irregular basis.
The other major players, Jason Behr and Flightplan’s Amanda Brooks, don’t exactly light up the screen either.
Behr, who can’t seem to escape the gravity of genre material after making a name for himself on TV’s Roswell (he’s also been in The Grudge remake and Skinwalkers, as well as the upcoming The Tattooist), doesn’t even seem to attempt to infuse his character of Ethan Kendrick with a glimmer of a personality. There’s nothing there to indicate Ethan is even a living, breathing person, much less the reincarnation of the young, valorous warrior who must ultimately sacrifice his love for the sake of the world.
Brooks fares no better with her Sarah, destined to carry within her the force that will be consumed, by either good or evil, thus determining the fate of the entire human race. There’s no struggle here, no raging against the dying of the light, just a young woman going blandly through the motions: Oh, look, a giant serpent. Run.
Meanwhile, other potentially capable actors like Twin Peaks’ Chris Mulkey and Elizabeth Pena (Jacob’s Ladder and Transamerica), are given nothing significant to do during the limited screen time they actually get.

If there is anything remotely resembling a redeeming factor where D-War is concerned, it’s quite possibly in the CGI.
Granted, this is nowhere near the level of a Transformers, and there are a healthy number of shots where the pixels are still showing. Still, for the most part, the effects are passably convincing, and the final climactic showdown between the good and evil serpents is commendable, and is marred only by the fact that it seems to be taking place not on Earth, but in an environment ripped off from Jackson’s Lord of the Rings. One minute, we’re headed towards Mexico, the next, we’re in Mordor.

This may have the pretty pixels, but at heart, D-War is still a D-grade, low-budget monster movie, complete with head-scratching script and dodgy performances.
Sad, since in the wake of Bong Joon-ho‘s Gwoemul (The Host), I was really hoping Korea would give me another monster movie worth stomping up and down and roaring about. In the end though, all I can muster is an exasperated eye roll and a paltry “Pfffft.”

Parting shot: Interestingly enough, Heroes’ James Kyson Lee (soon to be seen in the upcoming English-language remake of Shutter) is part of D-War’s loop group.
Though he is best known for playing Japanese sarariman/sidekick Ando Masahashi on Heroes, Lee is actually Korean, his real name Lee Jae-Hyeok.

Parting shot 2: Reviews of Gwoemul and Skinwalkers can be found in the Archive.

(D-War OS’s courtesy of younggu-art.com.)

IN THE INTERESTS OF ALL THINGS RECYCLABLE (1)

Given Hollywood’s sometimes annoying penchant for the redux, I’m starting this irregular series wherein I’ll be doing two things: either go back and re-watch a film I haven’t seen in a while and finally write a review for it, or, in the case of films I’ve already written reviews for, exhume said reviews, touch them up for public viewing, then have them zombie-toddle onto the world wide web, where they shall hopefully entertain and enlighten, as they were always meant to do.
These reviews will, of course, be of films that have remakes headed towards a multiplex near you.
And first up, Shutter…

Looking back…

SHUTTER

In the still-burgeoning Asian horror scene, Thailand is best known for having produced the Pang Brothers, who gave us Gin Gwai (The Eye) and its sequel, as well as Bangkok Haunted.
There are, however, other Thai directors who have also contributed to the movement, such as Nonzee Nimibutr, who brought us Jan Dara, as well as the “The Wheel“ segment of the pan-Asian horror anthology, San Geng (Three).
And then there are Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom, with Shutter.

Photographer Tun (Ananda Everingham), along with his girlfriend Jane (Natthaweeranuch Thongmee), is coming from the reception of a just-married friend, when an apparent accident kicks off the supernatural happenings of the film. Cue the by-now standard long-haired female ghost of the genre, and Shutter goes into full swing.
One of the film’s shortcomings though, is that it doesn’t swing quite as much as one would hope. Though Shutter is pretty evenly-paced, that pace may be a bit too leisurely for its own good. A sense of tension and danger is traded in for a steady, measured creep that falls short of weaving the veil of atmosphere and dread you’re fully expecting it to build up to.
Instead, Shutter seems more interested in wrangling what it can out of its central conceit of spirit photography, than paying closer attention to its story and that story’s pacing. Though the old flip book trick with the photographs is still utilized with creepy effectiveness here, and Tun with the Polaroid towards film’s end is a nice tense sequence with a nifty and macabre pay-off, the other photo-related scares are rather run-of-the-mill.

What cripples Shutter even more is the fact that Tun doesn’t come across as a sympathetic character, and the penultimate reveal makes him even less so. Jane is pretty much a cipher as well, content to play the role of concerned girlfriend caught up in the story’s events simply by association.
Presented thus with characters who aren’t readily identifiable and engaging, the audience is left in the position of impartial observer, like the photographer behind the lens, waiting for just the precise moment when all the elements feel right, and the instant is one worthy of posterity. Sadly, that moment never comes, and we’re left with our thumb hovering over the button, unsatisfied and vaguely annoyed.
Thus, with that buffer between the audience and the story, most of the scares feel filtered and muted. The fact that many of them are old hat doesn’t help either.

The film’s pace and Tun’s likeability as a character are assaulted even further by the decision to leave a chunk of the supernatural goings-on (those not occurring directly to either Tun or Jane) off-screen. When Tun discovers what the ghost has been up to beyond his (and the audience’s) purview, it only serves to make him seem painfully self-involved, making the viewer ask himself, What kind of a friend and person is Tun, really? A question answered towards film’s end, sounding the death knell for whatever little sympathy we may have managed to scrape together for poor Tun.
Ultimately, Shutter isn’t horrible nor is it unwatchable. It just doesn’t rise very much from the merely passable. And though that is better than being pedestrian and mundane, it doesn’t quite cut it in the veritable monsoon of Asian horror films that continues to flood multiplexes from Hong Kong to Tokyo, from Seoul to Bangkok to Manila.

“They are around us,” or so the tagline for Shutter claims, referring of course, to ghosts. But in this day and age, they may as well be talking about Asian horror films. Shoulder to shoulder, their ghosts stand, features obscured by the ebony fall of their long, dark hair. The homogeneity must be broken though, the hair pulled back from the wraiths’ faces, that we may appreciate them in their particularity, rather than the gradually-blurring collective they are becoming, the group picture of them that is losing its color and detail, as the months and years go by.

Since then…

The directing tandem of Pisanthanakun and Wongpoom saw the release of their follow-up horror effort, Faet (Alone), this past March in Thailand.
Haven’t been able to see that one yet, though I am curious…

Looking forward…

The English-language remake has its setting moved to Japan, with Rachel Taylor and Joshua Jackson as the young couple in peril. Taylor can be seen in the WWE horror movie See No Evil, and in the upcoming Transformers, while Jackson is of course, best known as Pacey from the Creek, and has appeared in past horror movies, the so-so Urban Legend and the appropriately titled Cursed.
Also in the remake are Ando himself, James Kyson Lee, Roy from the US redux of The Office, David Denham, and Matt from Nip/Tuck, John Hensley.
It’s directed by Masayuki Ochiai, who gave us Parasaito Ivu (Parasite Eve) and Kansen (Infection), neither of which I was terribly impressed by, but I do hope Ochiai manages to improve on the original, particularly in the lead character department.

(The Shutter review began life under the title, “Out of Focus.”)

(Shutter OS courtesy of papigiulio.com)