Shutter - Unrated (2008/Blu-ray/20th
Century Fox)
Picture:
B+ Sound:
A- Extras: B+ Film: C-
We
certainly are covering lots of films here at this site and we never seem to be
in shortage of films that have been re-made based on an Asian horror film, the
trend continues with 2008’s film Shutter,
which is a remake from a 2004 Hong Kong film.
This time around the film centers primarily around photography and tries
to bring about elements that happened to also be at the center of a terrific
documentary and a must-see for horror-genre fans called The American Nightmare (2000), which we covered years ago here:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/1991/The+American+Nightmare
Unfortunately
the film ends up being a mess and can’t quite muster out the concept fully
without being too silly and its PG-13 rating (although unrated in this edition)
just doesn’t cut it as it seems watered down and flat. You can see that this edition adds a few
moments here and there to stretch it above the PG-13 rating. Even young talents like Joshua Jackson and
Rachael Taylor can’t seem to act their way out of this one as they play a newly
married couple who find ghostly images in a recently developed roll that
exposes a horrible tragedy. The rest of
the film is dedicated to them trying to piece together the puzzle to which most
of would rather them just leave things be.
For this
Blu-ray release the film is presented in a 1080p High Definition transfer
framed at 1.85 X 1 and looks good and gives the films creepy and gutted color
palette a suitable tone without looking too faded or washed out like standard
definition DVD often did. Instead black
levels look deep and dark as they appropriately should and grain is highly
subtle with colors being balanced as well.
Sonically the film is also a success with a truly great DTS-HD 5.1 mix
that does give the film some boost and will explore the best in most 5.1
systems. Despite the films powerful audio/visual
performance it doesn’t make up for a super-thin plot and poor execution.
Since
this is a 50GB disc there are tons of extras that include a commentary track,
featurette, director featurette, a Luke Dawson featurette, a spirit photography
featurette and videos, alternate scenes, deleted scenes, alternate ending. It’s fair to say that extras are abundant on
this one!
- Nate Goss
