| Shutter |
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| Culture | |
| Thursday, 26 July 2007 | |
 Present day Bangkok. After accidentally running over a girl and fleeing the scene, student photographer Tun (Ananda Everingham) and his girlfriend Jane (Natthaweeranuch Thongmee) find their world threatened by several supernatural encounters featuring a strange female entity. Returning to the scene of the accident they learn that there was no body recovered. Disturbed by a reoccurring ambivalent ghost-like image in one of Tun's photographs, they decide to consult the editor of a paranormal magazine, who convinces them they are being haunted. Tun suffers from severe neck-strain that he assumes is whiplash from the crash. After several more ghostly encounters Tun learns that his close band of college friends are all committing suicide one by one. Jane confronts Tun about an anonymous reoccurring girl in some of his private photos. Tun reveals a secretive former love affair with timid but possessive college loner Natre (Achita Sikamana). After learning Natre committed suicide shortly after their split, Jane becomes convinced there is a connection to the hauntings...eventually leading to a startlingly revelation... When Sadako's ghost spider-crawled its way out of a T.V screen in Hideo Nakata's Ring (1998) the world of ‘New Asian horror' was swamped by the haunting presence of, (predominantly female) spirits bearing a grudge. Making appearances in everything from Japan's ever evolving Grudge series, through to Korean hit Phone and Hong Kong horrors like director Ann Hui's Visible Secret (2001) and Leslie Cheung's swan song Inner Senses, these pale-faced entities bled their way relentlessly into the 21st Century. Now, after somewhat mocking the genre with the comical Rahtree: Flower of the Night films, Thailand has finally stepped onto the 'dead serious' frightful female bandwagon, with writer-directors Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom's brooding first horror feature Shutter. This is horror experienced through the distorted photographic image, where the apparition viewed could simply be the result of dream-like hallucinations, bad lighting or the spooky distortions of double exposures. In any case there's something to rejoice about this surprisingly taut entry in the T-horror canon. Not least in that it showcases a shockingly rememberable spine-chilling final reveal, that demands you to reassess everything that have played before. One could argue that the effect may be a result of style over substance, (the concept of having someone you maligned come back to haunt you is simply a retread of all the other Asian horrors you've seen), but Banjong and Parkpoom certainly know something about conjuring up menacing mise-en-scene to distort the lines between reality and fantasy to literally play hide-and seek with the audience. Shutter is lit with a gloomy green, menacing monochromic tinge that penetrates all the claustrophobic interior spaces with an eerie ambivalent dread - suggesting something sinister lurking within the remote corners of the screen. The titular, and considerably decrepit device of the Polaroid camera is used as an inventive and frightening gateway to the hidden whereabouts of the supernatural. In one heart-stopping scene, following a camera shoot, photographer Tun is alone in an empty room, the lights suddenly fall and his camera starts to randomly flash shots automatically, gradually revealing a ghostly presence progressing toward him in a particularly gruesome sequence of omniscient shots. Another jolting experience occurs when Tun walks into his crimson-red dark room and starts muttering to, who he believes, is his girlfriend Jane, only for the phone to ring in another room to reveal that the real Jane is in fact on the other end of the line. Although bearing an uncanny resemblance to the diabolically demonized Pazuzu in Renny Harlin's barbaric Exorcist: The Beginning, the pathological burden of Natre emerges as a truly fearsome fiend. Where as Inner Senses featured a chilling revenge-seeking but eventually forgiving spirit, in Shutter past dues are not so easily forgotten by the unwavering wraith of Natre's lady vengeance. This isn't to say Shutter is devoid of Korean humour. Far from it - one of the best scene set-ups involves a potentially chilling confrontation in the cubicals of a public toilet that turns hilarious due to a cunning play with gender audience manipulation. It may contain the familiar re-jig of J-horror, K-horror and Hong Kong horror cinema preoccupations, concerning modern identity crisis and the disruption of the present by ghosts of the past, but Shutter eventually exposes Thai horror cinematic as a potential rival that has now unleashed a supernatural force to be seriously reckoned with. Oliver Pfeiffer |
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