Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a couple looks at the Thai horror film that we at AICN have been talking a lot about in the last few days. I just got this review in, which is funny because I myself got a look at SHUTTER this very night. I have to agree with the below review on most points. It's not a great movie and I can't even say it's a good movie. The movie has a few great still images of scary stuff, but ultimately it's nothing that hasn't been seen a thousand times. It usually involves long black hair coming up out of water or a flash of a woman with long, black hair reaching out for you and screaming. The movie starts out as I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER meets FATAL FRAME and doesn't end being much different than that, although the iconic image (SPOILER::::::the big finale payoff of one of the character's nagging pain in his neck:::::END SPOILER) is done very well. I also think the below reviewer gets a little mixed up about the camera being haunted. There is definitely a solid connection between the main camera and the ghost, but other cameras pick up the image of the ghost during the movie. Oh, and the movie has a lot of great real "ghosts caught in pictures" images. I love that stuff... But the movie's ultimately very disappointing. If you're going to pay to import any weird Asian horror film, get ONE MISSED CALL, Takashi Miike's mainstream take on the RING and JU-ON style films. That's how it's done. Anyway, enough with my rambling ass. Here's Piper at the Gate:
I wrote in a few months back with a review for 'Born to Fight'. I promised to keep you in informed of any Thai movies worth watching, I'll say I sort of dropped the ball on 'Shutter'. Sort of, because Shutter is only half worth watching. Not to generalize too much, but Asians love horror movies. It seems every weekend there is a new horror film in Thailand. Some good, most not-so-good. I saw Shutter around the same time Born to Fight came out. Not to give any of the story away but I'll give you a brief summary. Photographer is haunted by the ghost of a dead girlfriend. Turns out it's the camera that's haunted. The ghost only appears in the camera, or any other camera, or any other time it wants. The photographer tries to figure out what the ghost wants.
There are moments that are truely creepy. There are 3 scenes that really freaked me out. Hitchcock said (I think it was Hitchcock) something along the lines of 'all you need is a few good scenes, string em together with a bit of story and you got a good movie' or something to that effect. So Shutter had the recipe for a great movie. But the middle bits just weren't any good. They were choppy and muddled. The entire pacing of the movies was confusing. The acting was ok. The directing was not good. But for some reason everything came together for 3 scenes. Those three scenes were truely creepy, probably the scariest I've seen since I was 6 and watched the blob, give me a break I was 6, it came through the toilet for goodness' sake, thats scary to a 6 year old.
There is a scene similar to the camera scene in Saw (flashing in the dark), but scarier. The very last scene tied everything together, and I found to be quite scary. Some people I saw the movie with laugh out loud, apparently they didn't like it, but they're pseudo-intellectuals that can't find enjoyment in non-oscar winning films, who needs em.
Bangkok International Film Fest opens this week giving me the chance to see all the not-so-big budget movies I have heard about all year. Motorcycle Diaries and Sideways this Sunday.
Until next time I will be the
Piper at the Gate
