SHUTTER [2008]

Japanese director Masayuki Ochiai gives a stab at remaking the Thai garden variety ghost story film Shutter for American audiences.
Josh Jackson & Rachael Taylor play young newlyweds who move to Japan to further his career as a fashion photographer and weird things start happening when the ghostly image of Ju-On's Megumi Okina appears in all his work.
Ochiai has never been particularly good at telling a great story but he certainly knows how to set up creepy atmosphere and that's where this film excels compared to the original.  What the film does right it does a great deal better than it's source material and what it gets wrong is worse than wearing grandma's soiled undies.  What your tolerance is for tired retreads of scary Asian ghost girl remakes will depend on how you feel about this lost in the mix film.

2 haunted honeymoons out of 5

Ju-on (2002)

aka: The Grudge

Ju-on is a haunted house film that makes 112 Ocean Avenue (Amityville) seem about as scary as a Wendy house. It's the most terrifying piece of film I've ever watched. I wanted to escape my own skin but I couldn't.
The structure is initially confusing, the episodic nature and different time periods, sometimes with no visual cues to signpost the change, can disorientate and you may wonder just what the hell is going on. A second viewing helps to clarify things.

The family is at the centre of Japanese culture and also at the centre of Ju-on; understand that and the film becomes much deeper than first impressions would suggest.

4½ black cats in the daylight out of 5