There has been quite a trend over the last decade to take Japanese horror movies and remake them. Sometimes the result is good, like in The Ring. But other times, like in The Grudge, things get lost in translation and the audience just ends up confused. Shutter is yet another Japanese horror that Hollywood decided to remake. So I'm sure you're wondering if it is like The Ring or more like The Grudge.

In Shutter, a recently married couple Jane (Rachel Taylor) and Benjamin (Joshua Jackson) are starting their new life together in Tokyo. Ben is a photographer who previously worked there. He has been offered a wonderful job, so even though Jane knows no Japanese, they leave immediately after their wedding to honeymoon at Mt. Fiji, then live in Tokyo. Now I have to say that Jane is a wonderful wife. Even though she doesn't understand anybody there, she has to deal with her husband working with models all day, and she is relatively ignored by his friends Bruno (David Denman) and Adam (John Hensley), she is still a trooper. Unfortunately, she is being haunted.

Everywhere she goes, she starts seeing this ghost. A large number of the pictures that she and Ben both take also show a spirit in them. At first, Ben tells her that it is her imagination, but eventually even he has to concede that something is amiss. Jane sets off to find out what the ghost wants and try to put her to rest. One thing that I really thought gave it more credit to be a good remake is that the ghost is played by an actress, Megumi Okina, that has been in a lot of the Japanese horror movies that Hollywood keeps remaking, so she knows how to be truly creepy! Plus, the film was shot in Japan with a Japanese director, so it does keep the Japanese horror feel better than a lot of other remakes.

The DVD also has quite a few extra features on it, just in case you wanted to know more about the movie and ghost photography. There's even a feature telling you how you can create your own ghostly photographs to scare and impress your friends with. There are several deleted scenes too, quite a few of which I wish had been left in the movie.

I saw Shutter when it was in the theater. I was wondering if it would still be good on a repeat watching, or if it would be one of those movies that once you knew the secret, it just isn't as good. Luckily, it is as good on the second viewing. There were a lot of things that I saw the second time around that I had missed originally. If you're a fan of Japanese horror or horror in general, you should go get this movie. I'm not going to claim that it is as good as the original since I haven't seen that one, but it is a good horror movie.