Don’t waste your time with the bloated hollywood remake, if you want a real scare then you can do much worse than the creatively scary Japanese original version of the film ‘Shutter‘ (2004).
In the brilliant blanket sequence the audience expectations are expertly manipulated in the build towards the shock ‘jump out of your seat’ conclusion. At first the male protagonist discovers that his blanket is sliding away with the culprit revealed as a pale female ghost who starts to climb up onto his bed. This develops into a moment of slow building suspense as we tantalisingly anticipate the girl making her way towards him. The man tries to wake his partner but as he looks back around the figure seems to have disappeared. The real stroke of brilliance however is what transpires next.
Whereas we have come to expect these sequences to end with the principal character passing the moment off as an illusion and returning to their pillow, ‘Shutter’ has a cleverer trick up its sleeve. Instead the lead character decides to take a look under his bed as the gradual nail-biting tension returns. He investigates but there is nothing to see. He pops his head back up, takes in his surroundings with a confused frown, spots the blanket and then in a heart stopping moment comes face to face with the emerging ghost figure with the chilling visual accompanied by the sudden loud shrill of the soundtrack.
The instant acceleration in pacing is stunningly handled with the whole scope of the horror transforming from brooding and unsettling to all out, out of nowhere terror. The scene begins by scaring the mind and ends by causing a petrified physical reaction. This eery transition is one of the key reasons why this film feels so refreshing because it doesn’t give you the cliched narrative clues akin to the majority of horror films and thus the audience never know what to expect and must constantly be on their toes.
Scariest Movie Moments #19 – DAWN OF THE DEAD – ‘Good Mauling!’
Scariest Movie Moments #20 – CANDYMAN – ‘Candyman Meets Helen’
Scariest Movie Moments #21 – THE BLAIR WATCH PROJECT – ‘The Ending’
Scariest Movie Moments #22 – VACANCY – ‘Video Tape’
Scariest Movie Moments #23 – NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN – ‘Call It’
Scariest Movie Moments #24 – FINAL DESTINATION 3 – ‘Tanning Booth’
Scariest Movie Moments #25 – SESSION 9 – ‘Simon’
Scariest Movie Moments #26 – THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY – ‘Shooting At The Camera’
Scariest Movie Moments #27 – FATAL ATTRACTION – ‘Bunny Boiler’
Scariest Movie Moments #28 – WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE – ‘Dinner Is Served’
Scariest Movie Moments #29 – THE SHINING – ‘Opening Credits’
Scariest Movie Moments #30 – FRENZY – ‘You’re My Type of Woman’
Scariest Movie Moments #31 – SORRY, WRONG NUMBER – ‘The End Scene’
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6 Comments
A worthy pick, but Shutter is Thai, not Japanese.
Not really that scary. The asian horror producers maxed out our tolerance for this exact ghost figure with Ju-On. They keep re-hashing the same image and it’s just not scary, it’s just annoying. You want to kick her in the face and tell her to come back when she’s got some original spooks, not just having her hair in her face and crawling. It seems all these ghosts went to the same spook school.
Not all Asian horror go down the ‘strange woman’ path though. Films such as Infection and Reincarnation were fantastic films and didn’t use the aforementioned deranged female antagonist. I do agree with you though that it became slightly cliche in certain films attempted to succeed on the back of films like the Grudge and the Ring. Ghost of Mae Nak and The Locker were such examples. Then again films such as One missed call, Tale of two sisters and Shutter use the ‘strange woman’ concept extremely well.
Barn–absolutely agree some Asian horror is done extremely well, I myself am a big fan of “Tale of Two Sisters” and “Infection”, so we KNOW they can come up with some really original and thrilling work, I’d just like to see them focus more on that than the ‘strange woman’. But from what I can tell they’re definitely going in that direction.
Asian horror is, well, horrifying. In a good way. The reason being, they’re not confined to the safe-boundaries of Hollywood horror films. In Hollywood there’s always a question of “Is this TOO scary for the audience? Is this going too far?”. Whereas in Asia those boundaries are somewhat blurred and things can get very nasty. On the plus side, we get very frightening horror flicks. Downside…some of them are scary enough to cause you very real nightmares for days and weeks. Add in elements of mysticism so often associated with Asian countries and you have yourself a platter full of terrors.
For me it’s not so much the actual appearance of the female that I find particularly scary but more the way in which the scene executes the punchline of the horror. As an audience member we are constantly aware of what is lurking behind or in front of us but i have actually seen few examples of characters being confronted by villains from a sideways position. The manner in which she just suddenly pops in front of the camera is really well crafted.