Shutter (Thai/ 2004/ Netflix)
This thai horror revolves around a young couple who have an accident while driving and their life is never the same again… But it’s not as simple as you assume it to be.
Writer/ Director – Banjong Pisanthanakun, Parkpoom Wongpoom
Cast- Ananda Everingham, Natthaweeranuch Thongmee, Achita Sikamana
Plotx
Jane and her photographer boyfriend Tun, accidentally, seemingly, bump off someone while driving one night.
Tun insists on driving off while leaving the someone on the road.
But soon after, apparitions start showing in Tun’s photographs. They doubt if it is their guilt or actually a spirit that is haunting them. To assuage the guilt and to clear the doubt, they try to trace the accident to know whether the person lived or died.
Analysis
The story kicks off immediately and had me hooked. For some time, it panned out as expected. After all, I had an edge over the film by 17 years. There are plenty of jump scares too which I do not consider a good thing by the way. Meanwhile the performances kept me invested.
Gradually, as the story proceeds, there were some twists, some expected and some unexpected. The overall suspense factor was good for a horror. After all, what better than a combination of scare and suspense. Besides the story brings in some emotional factor too.
But as we move towards the climax, the film trumped over my assumptions. It still had an ace up its sleeve in terms of surprise. While in most films, the spook factor gets depleted after having used all tropes, in this case I would say it goes up towards the climax.
This well acclaimed horror did so well that it was remade into 4 languages including Tamil, Telugu, English and Hindi. But none of the remakes were unfortunately able to make a mark. Execution matters.
Having seen it almost 17 years down the line, I can see how it must have made waves with its novelty value, which might have faded with time, but the quality of execution, story telling and concept is still worthy of appreciation.
Something about the climax was so spooky that it kind of lingered on in the memory and this is despite the fact that I watch horrors a lot and they do not stay on the mind so easily.
A good watch for horror fans. Considering its reception and acclaim, I think it was a notable one in its genre. I thoroughly enjoyed it.