Shutter

With a setup familiar from ‘Lost in Translation’, a plot similar to ‘White Noise’ and a monster recognisable from ‘Ringu’, J-horror remake ‘Shutter’is little more than a mish-mash of random and increasingly blatant references disguised as a movie. Ben (Joshua Jackson) is a photographer returning to his Tokyo studio with new bride Jane (Rachael Taylor) in tow.

But a series of mysterious ghostly blurs on Jane’s holiday snaps lead her to investigate the phenomenon of spirit photography, by which images of the dead can be caught on film. Soon she and her increasingly shifty-looking hubby are inextricably entangled in a web of lies, flies and herky-jerky long haired ghost-women.

Despite one or two effective scares and an unnerving strobelit sequence, ‘Shutter’is instantly forgettable stuff, never even attempting to transcend its low rent multiplex status. Throwing in daft plot twists every few minutes for its undemanding teen audience, the film ticks along harmlessly enough without ever managing to leave a lasting impression.