Pearlcorder S701
07-22-2008, 03:05 PM
This was like My Super Ex-Girlfriend of the occult...but seriously, let's get this out of the way right now: If you've seen The Ring, The Grudge...well, you get the point...you've seen Shutter.
Popped this in as a rental tonight; director Masayuki Ochai apparently has crafted another dime-a-dozen Asian horror/thriller that is supposed to terrify us with images of liitle girls jumping out at us during any given opportunity -- while the strategy seems tired and redundant, there is no denying the popularity of horror coming out of Asia the past couple of years. Some were pretty terrifying -- perhaps The Grudge could qualify there -- and others were on the side of decent but forgettable; perhaps Shutter would fall closer to that category. However, the situation is not all bad, as the film wasn't atrocious or difficult to sit through -- and you'll see some of the sexiest Japanese women and models to grace the big screen since The Fast and the Furious.
As if this hasn't been explored before, Dawson Creek's Joshua Jackson plays Ben who has just married his sexy bride Jane (Rachael Taylor) and he takes a job in Tokyo where he finds himself photographing Japanese models in different environments -- but before this even happens, the couple, once arriving in Japan, are driving on a desolate road where they seem to strike a young girl who jumps out in front of the car (I know, I know...this sound all too familiar...). When police arrive to find no trace of the girl's body, Jane is disturbed and can't get the incident off her mind. What happens next is the textbook formula for one of these films: the couple start seeing visions of the girl in pictures Ben takes and ghostly images appear in the lens mechanism of Ben's cameras. The plot unfolds to expose a history Ben had with this girl years earlier and apparently she was very much obssessed with him -- when he wanted to break it off, she became troubled...we all know the type. And so Ben and his American friends working at this photography studio in Japan (none of this is made very clear as to why they're all working there and if they're the only Americans) tie the girl up and drug her wine, forcing her into...well, that's not made very clear, either. All we find out is that Ben took all the pictures of this -- and the girl's "spirit" is very angry. One by one, Ben's friends meet their demise at the hand of this vengeful "spirit" -- but we never really know if the couple actually hit the girl on the road that night, or if she was a "spirit" from some time ago. There is a reference at the end to the girl being cremated but it's all a confusing mess that the filmmakers obviously didn't care to explain in its almost an hour and a half running time.
VIDEO SPECIFICATIONS:
AVC @34MBPS; WIDESCREEN 1.85:1; 50GB DUAL LAYER
Unless the sharpness control of my display was set too high, this was one of the worst, nosiest and graniest titles I ever had the misfortune to review; from beginning to end, Fox's transfer of this film is riddled with a staticky fine (and sometimes not so fine) grain that becomes distracting in darker sequences. Outdoor scenes open up nicely with rich color and contrast, but even they are marred with a noisy "twitchiness" that runs like a thin veil in the background. It wasn't that the transfer was "soft" per se; most detail was sharp -- there was just a distracting amount of "twitchy grain and noise" that took me out of the experience. The audio held up much better...
AUDIO SPECIFICATIONS:
ENGLISH DTS HD MASTER AUDIO 5.1; SPANISH DOLBY DIGITAL 5.1; FRENCH DOLBY DIGITAL 5.1; SUBTITLED IN ENGLISH, SPANISH, CANTONESE, MANDARIN & KOREAN
Because my Panasonic Blu-ray player doesn't support DTS Master Audio at all, it extracts the "core" DTS mix embedded in these signals -- most of which sound fantastic. And Shutter didn't dissapoint. From the very beginning, there's a copious, rumbling amount of LFE on the English DTS Master Audio track (of which I heard the core) that will shake your walls -- so in terms of bass, this disc has it. Everything for the most part sounded crisp and clean; no problems with dialogue. Surround effects were conveyed nicely across the rear channels without, surprisingly for this genre of film, an obnoxious overpowering quality -- they simply flowed between the two rear channels smoothly, while eerie, ghostly effects whispered in your ears from the mix. Nice job here from Fox.
Oddly, even after I selected NONE for Subtitles, my player's onscreen menu still indicated "ON" for subtitles -- but didn't show them on the screen.
I didn't watch the special features, but there are a TON of them -- as is usual for explaining the origins of these Asian horror films. It was an entertaining rental, but I can't recommend Shutter as a buy -- at least not for my shelf. If this was your cup of tea, by all means purchase -- but I didn't find the video quality to be that buy-inspiring, either.
Thanks for reading, friends!
Popped this in as a rental tonight; director Masayuki Ochai apparently has crafted another dime-a-dozen Asian horror/thriller that is supposed to terrify us with images of liitle girls jumping out at us during any given opportunity -- while the strategy seems tired and redundant, there is no denying the popularity of horror coming out of Asia the past couple of years. Some were pretty terrifying -- perhaps The Grudge could qualify there -- and others were on the side of decent but forgettable; perhaps Shutter would fall closer to that category. However, the situation is not all bad, as the film wasn't atrocious or difficult to sit through -- and you'll see some of the sexiest Japanese women and models to grace the big screen since The Fast and the Furious.
As if this hasn't been explored before, Dawson Creek's Joshua Jackson plays Ben who has just married his sexy bride Jane (Rachael Taylor) and he takes a job in Tokyo where he finds himself photographing Japanese models in different environments -- but before this even happens, the couple, once arriving in Japan, are driving on a desolate road where they seem to strike a young girl who jumps out in front of the car (I know, I know...this sound all too familiar...). When police arrive to find no trace of the girl's body, Jane is disturbed and can't get the incident off her mind. What happens next is the textbook formula for one of these films: the couple start seeing visions of the girl in pictures Ben takes and ghostly images appear in the lens mechanism of Ben's cameras. The plot unfolds to expose a history Ben had with this girl years earlier and apparently she was very much obssessed with him -- when he wanted to break it off, she became troubled...we all know the type. And so Ben and his American friends working at this photography studio in Japan (none of this is made very clear as to why they're all working there and if they're the only Americans) tie the girl up and drug her wine, forcing her into...well, that's not made very clear, either. All we find out is that Ben took all the pictures of this -- and the girl's "spirit" is very angry. One by one, Ben's friends meet their demise at the hand of this vengeful "spirit" -- but we never really know if the couple actually hit the girl on the road that night, or if she was a "spirit" from some time ago. There is a reference at the end to the girl being cremated but it's all a confusing mess that the filmmakers obviously didn't care to explain in its almost an hour and a half running time.
VIDEO SPECIFICATIONS:
AVC @34MBPS; WIDESCREEN 1.85:1; 50GB DUAL LAYER
Unless the sharpness control of my display was set too high, this was one of the worst, nosiest and graniest titles I ever had the misfortune to review; from beginning to end, Fox's transfer of this film is riddled with a staticky fine (and sometimes not so fine) grain that becomes distracting in darker sequences. Outdoor scenes open up nicely with rich color and contrast, but even they are marred with a noisy "twitchiness" that runs like a thin veil in the background. It wasn't that the transfer was "soft" per se; most detail was sharp -- there was just a distracting amount of "twitchy grain and noise" that took me out of the experience. The audio held up much better...
AUDIO SPECIFICATIONS:
ENGLISH DTS HD MASTER AUDIO 5.1; SPANISH DOLBY DIGITAL 5.1; FRENCH DOLBY DIGITAL 5.1; SUBTITLED IN ENGLISH, SPANISH, CANTONESE, MANDARIN & KOREAN
Because my Panasonic Blu-ray player doesn't support DTS Master Audio at all, it extracts the "core" DTS mix embedded in these signals -- most of which sound fantastic. And Shutter didn't dissapoint. From the very beginning, there's a copious, rumbling amount of LFE on the English DTS Master Audio track (of which I heard the core) that will shake your walls -- so in terms of bass, this disc has it. Everything for the most part sounded crisp and clean; no problems with dialogue. Surround effects were conveyed nicely across the rear channels without, surprisingly for this genre of film, an obnoxious overpowering quality -- they simply flowed between the two rear channels smoothly, while eerie, ghostly effects whispered in your ears from the mix. Nice job here from Fox.
Oddly, even after I selected NONE for Subtitles, my player's onscreen menu still indicated "ON" for subtitles -- but didn't show them on the screen.
I didn't watch the special features, but there are a TON of them -- as is usual for explaining the origins of these Asian horror films. It was an entertaining rental, but I can't recommend Shutter as a buy -- at least not for my shelf. If this was your cup of tea, by all means purchase -- but I didn't find the video quality to be that buy-inspiring, either.
Thanks for reading, friends!