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.)

TRANSFORMERS
(Review)

It’s curiously apt that Transformers is produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by Michael Bay, as it feels like nothing so much as an attempt at a classic Popcorn Spielberg film, pumped up on adrenaline and testosterone.
Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeouf, recently seen in Disturbia and soon to be seen in Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods) is an American teen-ager seriously crushing on Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox, from Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen and TV’s Hope & Faith), a girl who doesn’t even know he exists. He’s got a bling-wearing Chihuahua called “Mojo,” who happens to be popping pain pills at the moment for a leg injury. He’s also busy selling some of his explorer grandfather’s stuff on eBay for his car fund.
But after he wrangles an A- from his History professor (one of his father’s conditions for getting Sam a car), he ends up taking an Internet-savvy alien robot home.
And though there are a couple of other plot threads that run through the first two-thirds of the film, the grand coming-of-age tale of a boy and his first car is the core of Bay’s Transformers, and it’s an effective and affecting hook that manages to hold all of the film’s other elements together, though just barely.

Considerable stretches of Transformers succeed admirably in the popcorn entertainment department; this film can move when it wants to. When Bay pulls out his standard bag of tricks (yes, lots of things go bang and boom here), aided as he is by impressive CGI courtesy of ILM and Digital Domain, you really do believe a vehicle can turn into a robot and piss on a man. Oh, and cause massive amounts of property damage too.
But it’s perhaps in the number of plot threads—survivors from a Decepticon attack on a US military base in Qatar; the efforts of the Pentagon to deal with the threat; the actions hacker Maggie Madsen (Rachael Taylor, soon to be seen in the English-language remake of Shutter) takes to decipher a signal used by the enemy—that the ride gets a tad wonky.
The film’s pacing is never quite as sharp as it should be, its rhythm mostly erratic, ultimately making it feel it really is as long as its running time indicates, always a no-no with movies that run over two hours.
Characters drop on and off the narrative’s radar like a Decepticon on buggered stealth mode, and some of the comedic aspects—particularly some of the Transformer hi-jinx, a borderline loony character played by John Turturro, and a hacker played by Anthony Anderson—though certainly not as blatantly off-key as those found in Spider-Man 3 (see review in Archive May 2007), still do manage to grate at certain points of the film.
And some of the dialogue, particularly from Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen, who gave voice to Prime in the cartoon; he’s also been Eeyore, the Red Skull, Captain Crabnasty from—heh—My Little Pony and Friends, and Glitterbot from—double heh—Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer) tends to be clunky and awkward.

Clearly, the film could have done with some judicious editing and quite possibly, the deletion of a character here and there.
I have a feeling though that many will choose to overlook these problems in the film since the action set pieces do their work like gangbusters. And LeBeouf goes a long way in giving the audience a relatable protagonist, in making us care, not just about him, but about his car/guardian/friend too.
Yes, for a bunch of pixels that speaks in snatches of songs and sound bytes, Bumblebee is surprisingly an endearing fictional construct. Certainly not on the level of a Gizmo or an E.T., mind you, but affecting nevertheless.

Contrary to what its iconic theme song claims, there really isn’t much more than meets the eye with Transformers.
It’s a Michael Bay film. It’s got money shots aplenty, handsful of underwritten characters, and it’s got loads of stuff that blow up real good. It’s fun, manipulative, and ultimately disposable popcorn entertainment. (Allowing your brain cells to chill out during the 144-minute running time is advisable.)
What is surprising though, is that the Popcorn Movie King throne vacated by Spielberg and assaulted by would-be usurpers like Roland Emmerich, Stephen Sommers, and most recently, Gore Verbinski, could very well be snatched up by Bay, of all people.
He’s taken his patented action formula and applied it to the PG-13 family friendly film franchise template, and produced a flawed, yet crowd-pleasing hybrid, with the resultant boffo box office that all studio heads just love.
Watch carefully, kiddies, we’re watching Bay transform before our very eyes.

(Transformers OS courtesy of wildaboutmovies.com.)