Saw the 2004 version of Shutter. It's a Korean horror which was later remade in English. It follows a photographer who accidentally hits a completely generic school-girl with his car (I'm not joking about her genericness. She wears a skirt, white, button-up shirt and long, black hair. This figure is the modern monster of our times.) He soon begins noticing blurs and smudges on his photos. Obviously having discovered paranormal photo-sensitivity at work, he goes about atoning for his crime.
The film is very by-the-numbers. Everything is very logical and dramatic. The plot is a bit obscure in parts, giving the early film a slightly disjointed, artsy feel, but this is only because the filmmakers want to make great plot-hole-filling reveals later on. Everything is explained, nothing is left ambiguous. The idea that suffering is meaningful and that justice exists in this world is comforting, although the idea that ghosts walk among us is not so much.
There is a recurrent image of a female mantis devouring a male mantis mid-coitus. There's a also a much lower-level (possibly imaginary) theme about how photographs select which details to include and exclude and that they therefore lie quite easily. These themes do not serve any purpose beyond mirroring plot elements (a female gets revenge on a male and photographs are involved.) The film isn't actually comically bad, but I so have very little positive to say about it. Perhaps the remake was better? As is it's for genre fans only. A by-the-numbers horror that sticks rigidly to formula.
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