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Dir: Masayuki Ochiai
With: Joshua Jackson, Rachael Taylor

Reduce, reuse, recycle. Hollywood has always been a green kind of town when it comes to foreign films, believing there's no such thing as a good idea that can't be stripped of its subtitles and repackaged for domestic consumption. Shutter, a remake of the 2004 horror from Thailand, shows what a futile exercise it can often be.

Joshua Jackson (Dawson's Creek) and Rachael Taylor (Transformers) play handsome newlyweds Ben and Jane. As the opening scenes make clear with all the subtlety of a flash gun in the face, he's a photographer. Just in case you don't make the connection between this, the title, and the theme of the movie, director Masayuki Ochiai presents some shots like photos.

Ben and Jane quit their flat in New York for a loft in Tokyo, where a fab new job awaits him. After an incident on the way, ghostly images begin to appear in the couple's snaps. These "spirit photographs", explains a local, are a way for unquiet souls to make their presence felt. Try that one next time you ruin the Christmas photos.

The original Shutter was built around the same dodgy premise, but it also had the kind of exotic, otherworldly air that makes the task of swallowing complete guff so much easier. Here, Ben and Jane seem like a pair of daft tourists having a bad holiday. They jump out of their skins on cue and look suitably disturbed as events unfold, but they never seem convincing. Nor does the ghost, who has hot-footed it from whatever department in central casting previously staffed The Grudge and its imitators. If you've seen the original, the 2008 version is pointless and dull. If you haven't it's simply dull.

12:42am Thursday 15th May 2008

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